


SOVEREIGN

by VaporWasp



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Gaslighting, M/M, Physical Abuse, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2020-06-26 01:42:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19758010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VaporWasp/pseuds/VaporWasp
Summary: “I just don’t want to share a room with him, May. Do you think there’s any way he’ll move out? So I can have the room to myself?”Aunt May’s hand was brushing at my hair again, tucking loose strands behind my ear in gentle motions.“It’ll be better than you think it will. I know it’s a little… unorthodox having to share a room with a 20-year-old. But you’ll be in school most of the day, you’ll barely have to see him.”





	1. Intention

“You don’t look very happy.”  
  
Aunt May studied me, reaching over to run her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. The touch was gentle, lingering a second longer than necessary before her hand returned to the steering wheel of the Ford Transit rental.  
  
The light turned green and Aunt May piloted the vehicle towards the intersection. The contents of the van rattled as Aunt May spun the wheel with too much force, over-correcting when the vehicle swung too sharply into the next street. She cursed under her breath as she fought to get the van back under her control, unused to handling such a heavy duty vehicle.  
  
I winced as another box rattled behind us and toppled onto the metal floor of the van. I prayed that none of my childhood belongings had just been obliterated.   
  
“Honey?” she pressed.  
  
I shifted position in the front seat, watching an Asian couple arguing in the back of a yellow cab.  
  
My throat tightened. “It’s just a big change, I guess.” In truth, I was dreading the move and had been counting down to today like a doomsayer awaiting the rapture.  
  
We settled in front of a red light and Aunt May’s brows furrowed.  
  
“It’ll be good for us Peter, I promise. Howard has given us so much.”  
  
I tried not to react to the name, knowing how much Howard meant to Aunt May. They had only been dating for four months, but you would have had to have been blind not to have seen the change in her. For the first time in years, I would catch her looking off into the distance with a genuine smile on her face, glancing excitedly at herself in the mirror as she prepared for a date, _singing_ as she cleaned the apartment. Just mentioning his name was enough to melt ten years off her face.  
  
That was why I couldn’t voice any of my own misgivings about Howard, or allow them to colour her perceptions of the man. I had only met him a small handful of times, but I couldn’t let Aunt May know just how uncomfortable he made me feel, how keenly I had been aware of some wordless instinct that made it impossible to relax around him. It had felt almost palpable, the thinly veiled condescension when the man spoke to me, the concealed disgust that he did his best not to let show.  
  
I hugged my arms tighter around my body, the memory making a jolt of unease twist in my stomach.  
  
“It all seems so sudden. I guess I’m still reeling.”  
  
I kept my eyes on the passing shops as the van lurched forward, a few unwelcome tears pricking at my eyes again. Like most 14-year-olds, I wasn’t above a crying jag when the mood was right — but I’d promised myself that I’d keep it together, that I wouldn’t spoil this day for Aunt May.  
  
“We need this, Peter. Rent is so expensive in New York and I don’t know where we’d be if Howard hadn’t offered to let us move in.”  
  
The contents of the vehicle rattled again as we rounded another corner, the 40 or so boxes shifting as the vehicle turned. My shoulders hunched and I clasped my hands together down by my waist.  
  
Aunt May could sense my reticence. “Imagine all the things we can save up for now that we’re living rent free. We might even be able to pay for college.”  
  
Hard as I tried to take her words to heart, the sentiment rang hollow in the face of having my entire life uprooted in the span of one disastrous day. The only good thing about all of this was that I wouldn’t have to move schools, that I could keep attending Midtown High with Ned and Michelle. It would take me an extra 20 minutes on the train every morning, but at least there would be one constant in my life, something the move couldn’t touch.  
  
“I know Aunt May. I’m just nervous about the change.”  
  
We sat in silence for the next few minutes, drawing closer to our destination with every passing street. I found myself chewing the inside of my cheek, the unease in my stomach settling into a dull queasiness.  
  
“I’m also worried about— well, _him_ ,” I muttered, eyes locked on the road.  
  
Aunt May’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Everyone has baggage, Peter. Howard’s son is no exception.”  
  
I paused, turning my next comment over in my head. “I just— I don’t understand what the deal is. He dropped out of college a year ago and he’s still unemployed? He just stays in all day and does nothing? I don’t get it.”  
  
I rolled the window down to let a little air into the Transit, the atmosphere suddenly feeling claustrophobic.   
  
Aunt May’s voice was gentle when she next spoke. “Things have been difficult for Anthony since Howard’s wife passed. I know how hard it was for you when—” I stiffened on the seat next to her, and May seemed to catch herself. “The point is, Anthony just needs some more time.”  
  
I had heard some of the words Howard had for his son on one of the rare occasions we had spoken, and it was clear that, to Howard at least, Anthony was nothing short of a disgrace. A deadbeat, good-for-nothing loser, content to make nothing of his life while Howard worked to keep him fed and keep a roof over his head. Part of me wondered whether the only reason Howard hadn’t kicked him out of the apartment was the indignity it would have brought to the family name.  
  
I idly flicked at the grey plastic of the Transit door, finding a spot where the moulding had begun to deform.  
  
“I just don’t want to share a room with him, May. Do you think there’s any way he’ll move out? So I can have the room to myself?”  
  
Aunt May’s hand was brushing at my hair again, tucking loose strands behind my ear in gentle motions.  
  
“It’ll be better than you think it will. I know it’s a little… unorthodox having to share a room with a 20-year-old. But you’ll be in school most of the day, you’ll barely have to see him.”  
  
It was suddenly difficult to swallow.  
  
“And besides, you’ll be sleeping in the living room until your new bed arrives next week. You’ll have some time to adjust.”  
  
I let the words sink in as I tried not to cry. It all felt so unfair. I hated being a teenager, hated having so little control over my own life.  
  
“But I want my own room.” It sounded petulant as I said it, but I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t used to having to share anything, especially not with a guy six years older than me. And from what I’d already heard, it sounded like he wouldn’t be the easiest kind of person to live with.  
  
The lines on Aunt May’s face tightened and the corners of her mouth dropped. “I know that it’s not ideal. But I’m doing my best, Peter, this is all I have. I would give anything to have you staying in luxury, but we all have to make compromises.”  
  
A new feeling settled in my stomach as Aunt May finished speaking, a sensation worse than the queasiness from before. It was guilt.  
  
I did my best to bottle my emotions.  
  
“I guess I’m just worried he won’t like me. But I’m sure it’ll be fine.” I flashed her a smile that I didn’t quite feel.  
  
“Who wouldn’t like you, Peter? You’re a wonderful, kind and strong young man.” The obvious pride in her words made my cheeks darken and a more genuine smile start to stretch across my face. I cleared my throat, trying to diffuse the emotion.  
  
“Well, I guess it will be cool to see our new home anyway. How far away are we?”  
  
“About 5 minutes. We should be there just in time for dinner.”  
  
I brought my feet up onto the seat of the van. Five minutes until my new life started, five minutes until everything went to shit.  
  
The remainder of the journey passed disgustingly quickly as I did my best to stretch out the seconds. Before I knew what was happening, we were pulling up in front of a fancy apartment block and I felt like I was swallowing back vomit.  
  
I stepped out of the van on shaky legs, gulping in the fresh Spring air like my life depended on it. I heard Aunt May’s door shutting on the other side of the vehicle and joined her at the rear. My head was spinning and my mouth was as dry as cotton.  
  
“Here, let’s grab a few boxes so we can start unloading.”  
  
She popped open the back doors and scooped up a couple of the boxes, handing them over to me. I braced myself, but thankfully the boxes didn’t weigh too much; or maybe it was the corded muscle I’d put on over the past few months that was helping me shoulder the burden.  
  
Aunt May lifted a couple of the lightest boxes with ‘May’ scribbled in Sharpie across the front, and a moment later I followed her over to the building.  
  
“What number is it?” I did my best to focus on the task at hand rather than the violent thudding of my heart in my chest.  
  
“182. Hit the buzzer.”  
  
I braced the two boxes against the wall as I reached up to press the tarnished bronze button next to 182.  
  
A crackle of static, followed by a deep voice asking “Yes?”  
  
Aunt May leaned over my shoulder to speak loudly into the intercom. “Hi Howard, it’s May and Peter.”  
  
There was a click as the door unlocked, and Aunt May stepped into the building. I gulped another breath of Spring air — the last I would get for a while — and lifted the boxes off the wall to follow. I crossed the threshold and glanced around at the foyer. The building was full Art Deco, and I felt incredibly out of place, some poor kid from Queens stumbling into the home of Old Money, as I went to join Aunt May in the elevator.  
  
From what May had told me, the Starks weren’t exactly rich — at least, not by New York standards — but Howard earned enough to afford a nice but modest apartment in one of the more expensive areas in town. I knew he worked at Osborne Corp, and was high up enough to get Aunt May a job as a receptionist without her having to interview, but beyond that I hadn’t been told much. Hadn’t asked, either, as I’d been content just to pretend like this whole thing would never actually happen.  
  
“His place is on the 18th floor. You’re gonna love the view.” Aunt May depressed the elevator button and let her boxes drop to the floor. I joined her in dumping the boxes at my feet as the elevator whirred into motion, my eyes tracing the same gold filigree decorating the interior walls as had been out in the lobby.  
  
My stomach was churning the entire ride up and my bladder felt uncomfortably full. The presence of Aunt May in the lift next to me was some small comfort, but nothing would have unclenched the tightness in my gut at that moment.  
  
All too soon the elevator dinged, the doors sliding open onto the 18th floor. I retrieved my boxes and tentatively followed May into the corridor, palms turning damp from perspiration.  
  
“Here it is.”  
  
We arrived outside a striking navy blue door with a golden 182 emblazoned in tall lettering across the front. My voice croaked as I tried to reply, and I had to cough before starting again. “Let’s get inside.”  
  
May pressed the buzzer and a moment later there were heavy footsteps approaching the door, the unmistakable clack of brogues on a wooden floor. The door swung open and Howard Stark stood in front of us, dressed in an expensive shirt and slacks.  
  
“May! So wonderful to see you. Let me take those boxes, come in,” he said in a voice thick with charm. The man spared a look for me as I followed May over the threshold into the apartment, and he nodded once as I mumbled a greeting.  
  
The front door opened into a living room that was probably as big as our entire old apartment had been. The floors were wooden and glossy, and the space was dominated by two leather couches surrounding a coffee table set in front of a television. The corners of the room were dotted with ornate end tables and unusual houseplants, and the back half of the room housed a lavish staircase leading upstairs. I spotted two doors leading off from the living room, both made out of a similar grain to the wooden floor.  
  
This would be my bedroom for the next week or so. It looked far too fancy to be homely, and I had to suppress the sensation of feeling incredibly out of place as I dumped the two boxes down in the corner of the room.  
  
Howard was leading Aunt May up the staircase with the other boxes, presumably on the way to the master bedroom. My eyes fell on one of the giant windows streaming light into the living room, and the sight was enough to make me breathless. It was a stunning view of New York, I couldn’t deny that. But as I looked back around at the furniture, I knew it would be utterly impossible for me to relax in a place like this, a place I so clearly didn’t belong.  
  
My eyes were drawn back to the staircase, the darkness of the hallway above yawning hungrily. My stomach felt like a hard lump of rock as my thoughts turned to _him_ , and I wondered why he hadn’t made an appearance, why he hadn’t come downstairs out of his— out of what would be our— room to say hello.  
  
It wasn’t difficult to figure out the reason, if I really thought about it. What 20-year-old would want to share their room with a teenage boy? He had probably been counting down to today like I had. He was probably going to hate me.  
  
I gulped, and felt the sudden nervous urge to piss. I looked over at the two doors leading out of the living room. I vaguely recalled Aunt May saying something about there being two bathrooms in the apartment.  
  
My gut told me to go for the left door and I obeyed. My hand twisted the cold, brass handle and tentatively pushed the door open into a kitchen/dining room area. The floor was fitted with the same polished wood as the living room and a large, mahogany table covered most of the space left by the counters and cooker, dressed with an immaculate fruit bowl and some overly polished silver candlesticks.  
  
Damn, no bathroom. My eyes spanned the length of the room and landed on the door to my right, leading into a room that would’ve been diagonally opposite the living room.  
  
I held my breath as I opened the door, unsure of what awaited me on the other side. My stomach pooled with relief as the white tiles came into view, and I opened the door wider to reveal a bathroom that looked every bit as grandiose as the living room had been. The back wall was filled by a large porcelain bathtub with a shower curtain hanging down one side and a fancy, gleaming white toilet stood immediately in front of me.  
  
I pulled the door shut behind me and clicked the bronze lock into place before pulling myself over to the mirror above the sink. I looked a little peaky and dishevelled, so I brushed some of the nervous sweat from my brow and did my best to rearrange my hair into a semblance of order. Once satisfied, I turned back to the toilet and unzipped, sighing quietly as a stream of piss unloaded into the bowl. I closed my eyes and tried to relax as I finished up, concentrating on making my breathing as deep and even as possible.  
  
My eyes snapped open when I heard movement through the wall to my right, my stomach dropping at the unexpected noise. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d stepped into the bathroom, but my eyes landed on a second door nestled to the right of the bathtub, leading out into a different room of the apartment. And shit, I hadn’t locked it!  
  
My heart hammered as I heard footsteps leading up to the door from the other side. I did my best to try and stop the flow before I was interrupted, but my bladder was too full. The footsteps stopped outside the door and in a moment of desperation I coughed loud enough to announce my presence, the sound coming out dry and a little hoarse in the silence of the bathroom. The footsteps paused, and I pictured someone reaching out to the handle on the other side.  
  
The footsteps abruptly turned and left, and I felt myself relax. Shit, that would have been awkward.  
  
I finished up and flushed the toilet before washing my hands in the sink. I studied the reflection of the second door in the mirror, drawing a topological map of the apartment in my head. That door probably led to the same room as the second door in the living room, and it was obvious that Howard’s son — that Anthony — was inside. It was probably his bedroom then, and that meant I was standing in Anthony’s private bathroom.  
  
The thought made my stomach quiver, and I hurried to get back out to the kitchen. I only had time to register one more detail before I left the bathroom, and it was enough to make my breath hitch.  
  
There was no lock on the bathroom door leading to Anthony’s room.  
  
I entered the living room just as Aunt May and Howard were finished descending.  
  
“The place is stunning Howard, I can’t wait to get unpacked. Is Anthony—”  
  
“He’s in his room at the moment but he’ll be joining us for dinner.” Something in Howard’s tone made me wonder if there had been an argument between the two men before we’d arrived.  
  
“Great, I can’t wait to see him.” Aunt May’s shoulders relaxed. “Peter, do you want to go down for a few more boxes?”  
  
“Sure,” I croaked. I reached for the keys and left back out through the apartment door, feeling an immediate flood of relief as I stepped into the hallway. I sucked in a shaky breath and did my best to still my nerves, which had been going haywire since I’d entered the apartment. Something about the thought of living with Howard and his son was making me incredibly anxious, and I couldn’t fight the feeling that I was walking into a trap.  
  
I pressed the elevator button and lingered in the hallway, taking in the gilded wallpaper and a fake plant by the window at the end of the corridor. I was in no rush to return to the apartment, and I knew that I had better make the most of my time outside before I had to return.  
  
Still, it was all too soon that I was approaching the front door with another two boxes in tow. I hastily knocked and waited for the door to open, quelling the nerves erupting in my stomach.  
  
Aunt May let me back in to the living room and I stacked the boxes in the corner, over by the others. It was agreed that I could keep my stuff in the living room until my bed arrived next week, at which point I would move in properly to Anthony’s room. The prospect left me feeling rattled, but at least it wasn’t happening for another week.  
  
Howard was in the kitchen setting out the boxes of takeout that had arrived while I’d been down at the van, and a glance through the door revealed he had also pulled out an expensive looking bottle of champagne from the fridge. He gestured Aunt May into the kitchen and I followed tentatively as he popped the bottle with a cheer, pouring the golden liquid into two glass flutes. He handed one to Aunt May and raised the other to clink it, toasting the new move.  
  
The corners of Aunt May’s eyes crinkled and some of the nerves in my stomach started melting away. If the move had made her this happy, I could try to put on a brave face. After all, she had been generous enough to take me in after my parents had died, and had never once asked for anything in return. I could at least try not to be so selfish, try to make the best of it.  
  
I watched as Howard moved over to the dining table, pulling out a chair for Aunt May like a gentleman. He took a seat at the head and gestured for me to join them, spreading out cartons of Chinese food. I took the chair opposite Aunt May, leaving one free chair at the tail, opposite Howard. My stomach clenched into a tight ball when I thought about who would be sitting there.  
  
I caught Aunt May studying my face and flashed her a tight smile. I wondered if she had caught my glance at the empty chair.  
  
She quirked an eyebrow at Howard. “Will Anthony be joining us?”  
  
Something seemed to tug at Howard’s face when she spoke the name, muscles tensing under his skin until the smile twisted into something approaching a grimace.  
  
“Of course, let me go grab him.”  
  
Howard stood up and walked back through to the living room. We heard him knock sharply on the door leading to Anthony’s room, and then open it to walk inside barely a second later, without waiting for a response. The door shut behind him and the kitchen fell back into silence.  
  
I picked at some of the sweet chili beef on my plate, lifting the crispy bronze meat to my lips with the chopsticks. Aunt May took another swig from the champagne flute and looked across at me, her eyes glistening with moisture.  
  
“Oh Peter, this is going to be so good for us.” It was hard not to be caught up in the emotions of her voice.  
  
I cast about for something positive to say in return.  
  
“The view from the apartment is great. Something about being this high up has always excited me.” I only had to partially fake the smile.  
  
I spooned up another mouthful of beef and chewed on the delicious food, wondering how often we would get takeout now that we were living with the Starks. Maybe Aunt May was right — maybe it was just about focusing on the positives.  
  
That thought abruptly died as I heard raised voices coming through the living room. That hadn’t taken long; they were already arguing.  
  
Aunt May smiled reassuringly at me. “Remember what I said, Peter. It’ll take a little adjusting from everyone before things feel normal again. Just give it time.”  
  
I nodded mutely and picked at my food again, not feeling particularly hungry any more. There was a louder shout that I could just make out as ‘-ortion!’ followed by a sudden crash, making both Aunt May and I flinch.  
  
I held my breath as the apartment stilled, wondering what was going to happen next. I didn’t have to wait long before I heard the door open in the living room, and the confident stride of Howard’s shoes on the wooden floor. I gulped as he entered the kitchen again and took his seat at the head of the table. His cheeks were a blotchy red, and he lifted the champagne flute and downed the contents with a grunt.  
  
The hair on my arms stood on end as I heard another set of footsteps enter the living room. Anthony’s footsteps were slower than his father’s, much less confident as he shuffled forward with the unmistakable squeak of socks on polished wood. I heard a small exhale as he approached the door to the kitchen. I felt queasier than I had all day as I waited for him to pass through the threshold, and it seemed like he was waiting for something too.  
  
I kept my eyes glued to my plate, my heart inexplicably racing. I let out a shuddery breath as he entered the room, my anxiety skyrocketing.  
  
From everything I had heard about Anthony, I was so nervous to meet him, knowing I’d have to share a room with him, that I’d be living in his space. My stomach somersaulted as the wooden chair legs scraped against the floor, before Anthony sat down with another quiet exhale.  
  
My eyes were glued to my plate as I made a pretence of moving some food around with the chopsticks, but I could see one of his arms in my peripheral vision. It was muscular and at least twice the width of my own spindly arms, and the thought was making something small and tight tug at the bottom of my stomach.  
  
“Thank you for joining us Anthony,” Howard said in a stern voice that brooked no argument, as if Anthony had chosen to eat with us rather than being practically dragged from his room.  
  
There was a pause where nobody said anything, and I fought the urge to look up and read the expression on their faces. The back of my neck was flush with sweat.  
  
“You know I don’t like to be called that.”  
  
The deep, sharp intonation made my stomach twist itself into weird knots. My eyes involuntarily shot up before I caught myself and fixed them back onto the plate in front of me. It was just a split second glance, but I had seen the messy hair sticking up in all directions, smooth, tan skin and the expression on his face — hatred unlike anything I had ever seen before — as he stared at Howard.  
  
“Fine, fine. Thanks for joining us Tony,” Howard replied dismissively, as if the boy had ceased to take up any of his attention. He chowed into the food in front of him, apparently oblivious to the death glare ‘Tony’ was giving him.  
  
I found myself casting another furtive glance at the younger Stark before I could stop myself, taking in a few more details — dark eyes and a tight Metallica T-shirt — before my eyes settled back on my plate.  
  
Aunt May cleared her throat and I was grateful for the distraction.  
  
“It’s a lovely place you have here. Peter and I are thrilled to be moving in,” she said to Tony, apparently trying to bridge the gap in the stony silence that had engulfed the kitchen.  
  
He was still staring at Howard as if they were the only two people in the room, not touching the food in any of the cartons spread across the table.  
  
After another pause, he flashed Aunt May a smile that could only be described as condescending.  
  
“What’s another couple of freeloaders, right Howard?”   
  
The kitchen went deathly still, so still that I was afraid to breathe. Howard’s knuckles were white as he gripped the mahogany table, and I could tell from the taut skin at his jaw that he was grinding his teeth together.  
  
I hunched down in my seat and glued my eyes back to my plate, trying to make myself as small as possible. My stomach felt like it had dropped into the apartment below as I waited for the inevitable explosion, certain of what was about to happen.  
  
My whole body lurched as the sound of shattering glass filled the kitchen. I looked up to see the remnants of Howard’s champagne flute splintered on the counter behind Tony.  
  
“You _dare_ — You do not ever disrespect May like that again if you want to keep living under my roof!” Howard shouted, staring at Tony like he wanted to kill him with his eyes.  
  
The younger Stark raised his hands up in surrender, seemingly unshaken by the fact that Howard— _that he_ _’d just thrown a glass flute at his head_.  
  
“No offence intended, I was just noting the double standard.” Tony’s voice held a hint of amusement, almost like he found the situation humorous, but I could tell that his body had gone unnaturally still. A part of me wondered whether he was trying to wind Howard up, or whether the humour was some sort of defence mechanism.  
  
“You are on thin ice,” Howard spat at him, actual flecks of spit landing on the mahogany table. I felt the bile rise in the back of my throat and set my chopsticks down by the side of my plate, my appetite vanishing. Aunt May was staring at Howard with concern lining her features, looking unsure of what to do.  
  
I made a mental note to ask her how she felt about the ‘throwing a champagne flute at his son’ thing later, wondering how she would justify Howard’s behaviour. I grit my teeth and tried not to judge him too harshly for his outburst, since he was Aunt May’s boyfriend and all. Families were difficult, and maybe there was some kind of balance there, some dynamic I hadn’t quite yet witnessed. I should reserve judgement for at least the first five minutes before I came to any conclusions.  
  
Aunt May went for a second attempt to break the ice.  
  
“So, Tony, are you seeing anyone at the moment?” she asked politely, the warmth coming through in her voice despite the terse past few minutes. It was obvious she had chosen this as the safest possible topic, given the animosity over Tony’s home life, the absence of school, and the absence of any career to ask about.  
  
Tony’s voice was much more even when he responded, more of the humour making its way back into his tone. I stared at his lips as he replied, my gaze transfixed by the way they formed around every word.  
  
“I’m not currently seeing anyone, no. It’s a pretty tight ship around here, and I wouldn’t want to intrude on Howard’s… _generosity_ ,” he said, purring the last word as if trying to provoke a response from the man.  
  
I heard Howard mutter something that sounded suspiciously like ‘degenerate’ under his breath, and my curiosity was instantly piqued. I felt the urge to ask for clarification, but I knew it would be a bad idea to insert myself into whatever messed up dynamic was between the two Starks. Instead, I opted to stay quiet, the curiosity burning inside me as I wondered what Howard could have been alluding to.  
  
Sensing that this, too, was apparently a sensitive topic, Aunt May tried to steer the conversation again into a safer direction.  
  
“Got any hobbies? I know Peter likes to build things, like robots and electronics.”  
  
I froze, feeling my face heat as I became the unwitting centre of attention. I looked at Tony, startled, but his eyes were still locked on Howard across the table as he ignored the food in front of him.  
  
“Nope, no hobbies. Well, dinner has been lovely and all but I should really get back to wasting my life and doing nothing,” he said with false cheer as he stood up from his seat. I winced as the words came out of his mouth, knowing that he was doing it deliberately, trying to make this as awful and uncomfortable for everyone as possible as he did all he could to set Howard off.  
  
Howard sat stolidly in his chair, shovelling more food into his mouth and refusing to take the bait.  
  
“Bye Anthony,” he said dismissively, not even deigning to look at the boy. Tony stood there, his expression changing to a glare as Howard turned back to Aunt May.  
  
“I really must take you out to dinner at Guilana’s across the road this week, she makes the most amazing pasta,” he said, chewing loudly on the mouthfuls of Chinese food he was practically inhaling. I saw Tony tense out of the corner of my eye, and my stomach dropped as I realised with a grim certainty that he was about to do something. I held my breath and steeled myself for the inevitable.  
  
After a few more moments, though, Tony unclenched his hands and walked out of the kitchen. Relief pooled in my stomach and it was so strong that I felt light-headed, unaware of just how tense I had been. As I heard the door of Tony’s bedroom open and shut through the living room, I noticed something else that I didn’t really know how to interpret.  
  
Throughout the entire dinner, Tony had never once looked at me.

🐝 🐝 🐝

It was a few hours after dinner and I had my laptop open on my chest in the living room. Aunt May and Howard had retired upstairs around an hour ago, and I was stretched out on the couch in my pyjamas — an over-sized faded grey tee that read ‘Entropy — it aint what it used to be’ and some old boxers — and laying on top of the sleeping bag I had retrieved from one of the boxes in the corner of the living room.  
  
Tony hadn’t emerged from his room since the disastrous dinner, and I had spent the evening in terse silence watching a nature documentary with Aunt May and Howard. They had turned in for an early night after that, and I had stared up at the dark ceiling for a full fifteen minutes before I came to the realisation that there was no way in hell I’d be able to sleep tonight. My body was still pumping through the remnants of the adrenaline that had spiked through me at dinner, and my stomach was coiled with a nervous ball of tension that I couldn’t seem to relax.  
  
So, naturally, I was messaging Ned on Discord and telling him all about the move. I had done my best to put on a brave face for Aunt May, but with him I could be honest and let my guard down. Besides, I needed this — if I couldn’t let out all of my anxiety to someone, I knew I would be awake fretting the whole night.  
  
I had just finished describing the building and the apartment when Ned turned the conversation around to ask me about the Starks. I paused with my fingers hovering above the keyboard, not knowing where to begin.  
  
**Howard seems pretty strict, I guess.**  
**  
** I swiped my tongue over dry lips, contemplating what else I could say. There was that distinct unease inside of me when I thought of Howard, but it was difficult to put into words just what I felt about the man.  
  
**At dinner he threw a champagne flute at Tony** **’s head.**  
**  
** I waited for Ned’s reply as I divulged that piece of information, not sure if Ned would think it was as crazy as I did.

**Tony's his son, right? Jesus.**

**Yeah, it was pretty awful. I don't** **think I’m gonna like it here.** **  
**

**That's insane. I’m surprised Aunt May would date someone like that.**

I nodded as I read the message, pleased I wasn’t overreacting.  
**  
Me too, tbh.** **  
**

**So what do you think of Tony?**

I paused, turning the question over in my mind. In truth, I didn’t really have a response. I had no idea what I was feeling about the older boy. Nervous, intimidated… every time I pictured his face, I felt my pulse race and my abdomen flutter.

**Peter?**

Ned prompted with another message, and I typed out the first thing that came into my head.  
  
**Tony** **—**  
**  
** I traced the words with my lips as I typed them.  
**  
Tony makes me anxious.**  
**  
** I decided to leave it at the one comment. It was hard enough trying to figure out what I was actually feeling, without having to translate it into words for Ned. Besides, “anxious” was a pretty accurate descriptor for the jumbling ball of dread rattling around inside my rib cage with every thought of him.

**That's not a good sign Peter. What’s his story, anyway? What’s he like?**

I thought back to what Aunt May had said in the van on the way over, and the other few times he’d cropped up in conversation before the move.  
  
**He** **’s a college dropout. Pulled out a year ago and now he lives in Howard’s apartment, doing nothing. Doesn’t even have a job. I think he’s kind of a deadbeat.**  
**  
** It felt a little harsh to type out, but it was the truth, after all. Tony didn’t have a job, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t doing anything with his time except, well — spiralling.

**That would never fly in my house. Mom would kick me out at 18 if I didn't start paying rent!**

I smiled at the mention of Ned’s Mom, my fondness for the woman making a feeling of warmth spread though my chest. I felt my upper lip curl as I typed out the next message, feeling my sense of humour return after the stressful day.  
  
**You should have heard the way he was speaking to Howard at dinner, having** **‘some nerve’ doesn’t even begin to cover it! Your Mom would have a heart attack if you ever spoke to her like that.**  
**  
** I tried to picture myself or Ned acting like Tony had, and snorted at the implausibility of the image.  
**  
Promise me you** **’ll smack me if I get to 20 and I’m still living at home, doing sweet FA with my life and mooching off Aunt May while I talk shit to her.**  
**  
** I shook my head as I hit send, the image still making the corners of my mouth turn up. Aunt May was no slouch either — she’d be there for me in a second if I needed her help, but she was not the sort of woman who brooked bullshit for long either. **  
**

**Peter, you're a Grade A student without a selfish bone in your body. Let’s not even pretend you would be capable of something that pathetic.**

“Ouch! Ned, that was harsh,” I said aloud, smiling genuinely for the first time all evening. I knew that the situation was far more complicated than that, that there was a whole history that I was glossing over. But after all the nerves and tension of the day, it felt good just to chat shit with Ned over Discord without thinking too deeply about it. It felt _normal._  
  
I had only been online for 15 minutes or so, but I was already feeling immensely better about the situation. I didn’t know what I would do without my friends, and I couldn’t wait to catch up with Ned and Michelle properly at school tomorrow.

**I'm gonna have to go Peter. Mom wants me to watch Treehouse Masters on Animal Planet with her.**

**Sounds like you** **’ll be in for a fun hour…**  
**Ok Ned, I** **’ll catch you later.**  
  
I closed the laptop lid and scooched over to place it on the coffee table. I found myself still smiling from the conversation and folded my arms behind my head, looking up at the living room ceiling.   
  
My eyelids drooped, feeling the weight of the day pressing down on me now that my anxiety had begun to melt away. Maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult to fall asleep here after all, the living room was spacious and the lights of the city were casting mesmerising patterns on the ceiling through the large bay windows…  
  
My eyes snapped open as the door handle directly behind the couch turned, moments before the door was opened and padded feet were tracking across the hardwood floor. I was afraid to move or even breathe as I heard Tony walking through the living room and towards the kitchen, my heart beating frantically in my chest. He had to know I was here, didn’t he? Did he think I was asleep?  
  
The second door handle was turned as Tony entered the kitchen, and I let out the breath I’d been holding since he’d stepped into the room. My mind whirred back into motion as I heard the faucet turn on in the kitchen, and I wondered if I should say anything, or announce the fact that I was awake. It would be rude not to, wouldn’t it?  
  
But the thought of speaking to Tony was filling my stomach with cement. I worried my bottom lip, deciding it would be better just to feign sleep. The older boy would be back in his room in no time, and I could just pretend I had never heard anything.  
  
I nodded, committing to the coward’s way out. I would have to spend time with Tony when I moved into his room, I may as well enjoy my last week of freedom while I could.  
  
I closed my eyes as I heard him come back into the living room, listening to the sound of his soft footsteps as he headed back to his room. They grew closer as he neared the couch, and then abruptly stopped, a few feet away from where I was laying.  
  
“Peter?” He sounded uncertain.  
  
I did my best to ignore the way my stomach fluttered as I sat up to face him, knowing it would be rude to do anything else. My breath hitched as I looked at him — was looked at _by him_ — and I stumbled over what to say.  
  
Thankfully, Tony took the opportunity to say more.  
  
“Mind if I sit?” He nodded towards the end of the sofa I was laid out on.  
  
“Uh, of course.” My voice sounded a little strained. I pulled my legs up to give him room to sit at the foot of the couch and hugged my knees to my chest, trying to make my body as small as possible. I felt briefly self-conscious as I became aware of the fact that I was only wearing grey boxers and a T-shirt, but Tony was dressed much the same, wearing black boxers and the same Metallica shirt from dinner. I tried not to stare at his legs as he walked round to the front of the couch.  
  
Tony placed a glass of water down on the coffee table as he sat, facing me again in the twilight of the living room.  
  
“I just wanted to apologise for dinner. I know it can’t have been the warmest welcome you’ve ever received.” He smiled ruefully, and the breath caught in my throat. I stumbled, not knowing how to respond.  
  
Tony must have read something on my face, because he brought up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Look, Howard and I have a— complicated relationship, you could say. We don’t exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things. We mostly try to stay out of each others’ way, but lately we’ve just been butting heads.”  
  
I digested the new information, wondering why Tony was going out of his way to tell me this.  
  
“Ok,” I responded, not really sure what else to say. “Thanks.”  
  
Tony reached out a hand and patted one of my bare knees. I felt a jolt of electricity burst through my skin at the contact and was thankful that the dim living room would disguise the blush that had just risen to my cheeks.  
  
“I know this can’t be easy for you either, christ you’re only 14. Since we’ll be sharing a room, I thought I should extend an olive branch. Whatever else goes down, this’ll be much easier if we’ve got each others’ backs.” He lifted his hand back off my knee and I felt simultaneously elated and disappointed, a reaction I didn’t even want to begin to analyse.  
  
I distracted myself by scratching at my shoulder, feeling the wide rim of my T-shirt pull down to reveal my left clavicle.  
  
Tony’s eyes followed the motion. “I guess they don’t make clothes small enough to fit a toothpick, huh.” His lip was quirked and I felt my ears turn hot. I couldn’t tell if we were meant to be sharing the joke, or if the comment had been made at my expense.  
  
A twinge of self-consciousness made my eyes drop, landing somewhere between Tony’s muscular arms and broad chest.  
  
“Well, I guess we can’t all be as—” I fumbled, and quickly changed direction. “I mean, I’ll c-catch a growth spurt any day now.”  
  
The corners of Tony’s mouth quirked. “I wouldn’t worry, Peter, it’s perfectly normal for teenage boys to have concerns over their size.”  
  
My cheeks were suddenly on fire and my throat locked up. “I—”  
  
Tony chuckled, a warm, rich sound. “I’m sorry, that was wildly inappropriate. Forget it.”  
  
It took a moment for my heart to stop racing.  
  
“Yes, well, I— what’s your story?” My subject change was about as subtle as a New York subway. “I mean, uh— if you d-don’t mind talking about it.”  
  
There was a momentary silence, long enough for me to wonder if I’d made some kind of faux pas.  
  
“There’s not much to tell. Couple years ago, everything was great. I had a full ride at MIT, my parents—”  
  
“MIT?” I interrupted, positive I had misheard.  
  
The corners of Tony’s lips were curling again, almost like he was fighting back a laugh. “Uh, yeah it’s this college in Massachusetts that teaches engineering-”  
  
_Oh, he thought-_  
  
“No!” I gestured with my arms in an attempt to dispel the embarrassing assumptions he was already drawing about me. “I know what MIT is, I’m not- I’m not a complete idiot.” My cheeks flushed an unattractive tomato hue and I felt the back of my neck erupt with heat. The comment held a special ripeness coming from a guy who looked— well, like Tony looked.  
  
I could sense a change in the way Tony was sitting, a twitch of his posture accompanied by a tensing in the muscles at his throat. Like he was poised to do something, like he couldn’t quite help himself.   
  
“Oho, found a sore spot have we? Not too fond of being treated like a dumb little mutt?”  
  
Tony was smiling as he said it, clearly intending the ribbing as a joke. But something weird happened as he said the word ‘mutt’, a strange clench in my abdominal muscles that made my teeth stab into my bottom lip as my body gave an embarrassing shudder.   
  
I did my best to shield my humiliation from the older boy, feeling utterly mortified by my body’s reaction. When I finally dragged my gaze back to his face, I found his eyes piercing into mine with his lip quirked into a smile that could have been read any number of ways.  
  
“Huh, I can’t say I expected that.”  
  
My stomach gave a nervous lurch. Something told me he wasn’t referring to my MIT comment. “What do you— I don’t understand?”  
  
Tony held my gaze a moment, saying nothing. “I think you understand perfectly well.”  
  
“I.”  
  
I broke eye contact and suddenly found myself unable to breathe. My heart was thundering in my chest and my palms were slick with sweat.  
  
The older boy seemed to take pity on me, as one of his large hands landed on my shoulder. “Forget it, I’m just messing with you.”  
  
“O-okay.” My cheeks were still burning and my stomach felt like it had been pulled into knots. The thick pads of Tony’s fingertips against my shoulderblade were making jittering bursts of frantic energy pulse through my abdomen, and it felt like I was seconds away from hyperventilating.   
  
Tony lifted his hand from my shoulder and just as quickly, the feeling passed.  
  
I did my best to push the moment of panic behind me, but it was a few more seconds before I was able to collect my thoughts. “Anyway, uh— MIT is my dream college. You’re saying you had a full scholarship?”  
  
“Yeah.” He said the word without a hint of arrogance.  
  
“Wow.”  
  
“Eh, it’s really not that special, kid. Anyone can get a scholarship, you just need to have the right grades on your application, the right kind of extra-curriculars.”  
  
I nodded mutely, surprised by how casually Tony was talking about it. As if getting a full scholarship to the best science university in the country had been _easy_.  
  
I was definitely re-evaluating everything I thought I’d known about the Stark boy.  
  
“I was midway through my second year when mom passed. It thew a lot of things out of balance, and I ended up having to move back in with Howard. It’s only temporary, until I find my own place, but I’ll probably be living here for the foreseeable future, so…” He trailed off, eyes resting on his glass on the coffee table.  
  
The silence stretched out a moment longer and I offered him a weak smile.  
  
“So what’s your story, Pete? How did you end up living with your Aunt?”  
  
I felt suddenly breathless, a weight pressing down on my chest. “Um, mind if I use the bathroom first?”  
  
Tony nodded and I stood up, swaying a little as the blood rushed to my head. I felt self conscious in my ratty old boxers and hastened to leave the room, feeling his eyes on me every step of the way. I passed through the kitchen and back into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind me. I walked over to the sink first, splashing some water onto my face to try and calm myself down.   
  
Now that I had seen this new side to Tony, I felt guilty about my thoughts from earlier that day. Whatever was going on with him was clearly a lot more complicated than I had realised, and Tony was obviously a genius — anyone who got a full ride to MIT couldn’t be anything less.  
  
The thought made me simultaneously more relaxed and more anxious about the prospect of sharing a room with him. I wondered if he would share any of my nerdier hobbies, like the robotics or computing, and for the first time that day I felt a small trickle of hope about the move. I had never had an older brother before, but maybe—  
  
Maybe Tony could give me everything I’d been missing.  
  
I finished my business and washed my hands in the sink, pausing to gaze at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My hair was in complete disarray, but I supposed there was no point trying to fix that now.  
  
I unlocked the door and headed out into the kitchen, deciding I would start at the beginning and tell Tony about my parents. I briefly considered telling him about Uncle Ben, but shot down that idea with the usual vehemence as I felt that tight, suffocating ache in my throat.  
  
I stepped back through the threshold into the living room, expecting to see the older boy in the same spot on the couch.  
  
“Tony?” I asked, eyes scanning over the darkened room. “Are you here?”  
  
I walked back over to the couch, feeling numb. Tony’s glass had vanished from the coffee table, meaning that he’d probably gone back to—  
  
_Oh._  
_  
_ I approached the coffee table, the dread building inside me every step.  
  
_Please don_ _’t tell me— Shit_.  
  
The realisation hit me like a physical blow, and a violent tremble ripped through my body. My laptop was sitting open on the coffee table and one glance at the screen was enough to confirm my worst fears.  
  
My Discord conversation with Ned was open on screen, and I felt my knees turn to jelly as I sank down into the couch. The words jumped out at me as I read back the conversation, and I felt my chest constrict with a crushing pain.  
  
**Dropout...lives in Howard** **’s apartment, doing nothing. Doesn’t even have a job. I think he’s kind of a deadbeat.**  
**  
Promise me you** **’ll smack me if I get to 20 and I’m still living at home, doing sweet FA with my life and mooching off Aunt May while I talk shit to her.**  
**  
****Let** **’s not even pretend you would be capable of something that pathetic.**  
  
“No, please,” I spoke aloud, praying for the ability to undo my mistake. “Idiot,” I admonished myself quietly, hands shaking as I reached the end of the conversation. My eyes closed as my head tilted back against the couch, the words from the conversation permanently burning themselves into my memory.   
  
“Why did he have to see it? Why?” I moaned, feeling an ugly mixture of anxiety, cringe, and utter humiliation building up inside of me. “Oh God.” I brought my hands up to my head and buried my face in them.  
  
I sank back into the sofa feeling two inches tall, cursing myself for being so dumb. How could I have let this happen? How could I have let him see that?  
  
I had to make it right. I had to fix it, there was no other choice.  
  
Before I could lose nerve, I pulled myself off the sofa and rushed over to the door to Tony’s bedroom. I raised my hand to knock, but felt the courage drain out of me as I stood there, picturing the way he had looked at Howard over dinner, the way he had spoken. I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance if he turned that anger on me, he would _ruin_ me.  
  
I gulped down the nerves and forced myself to rap my knuckle against the wood three times. I’d tried to make the knock sound confident, but it had come out pathetically weak and feeble.  
  
I waited for agonising moments in the quiet for Tony to come to the door, but heard nothing. I raised my hand to knock again, louder this time, but the result was the same. The panic redoubled inside me and I felt bile rise in the back of my throat, sickened by what had happened.  
  
As a last resort I turned the door handle, determined to do whatever it took to fix this before it was too late. But the door didn’t budge an inch, and I realised with a sinking sensation in my stomach that Tony had locked it from the other side. That could only mean one thing - Tony was furious.  
  
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, tears pricking at my eyes as the reality of the situation dawned on me. I had fucked it up, I had really gone and fucked it up. I hadn’t even lasted half a day without making Tony hate me. How could I be so stupid not to lock my goddamn laptop?  
  
I slumped back over to the couch, defeated and drained. I lay back atop the sleeping bag and slammed the laptop lid, not wanting the reminder of what had just happened.  
  
“Why,” I moaned at myself, covering my face with my hands again. Why couldn’t this just be an awful dream that I could wake up from, why couldn’t everything go back to how it was?  
  
I tossed and turned on the couch for the next few hours, going over the evening again and again in my head as I failed to get to sleep. I tried counting sheep, thinking of physics equations, telling myself I needed to get some rest before school tomorrow, but nothing would quiet the anxiety in my stomach or the tumble of thoughts racing around my head.  
  
My stomach tied itself into knots with the thought of having to explain to Aunt May what I had done, how I had insulted Tony so badly on the very first day of living with him.  
  
It must have been around 2 or 3 in the morning that I finally went to sleep, my mind conjuring all sorts of awful scenarios in my dreams between me and Tony, picturing that same hateful look he had levelled at Howard earlier in the day.  
  
Only this time, all of Tony’s fury was directed at me. 


	2. Instigation

I jolted awake the next morning to the sound of heavy footsteps coming down the staircase.

I blearily opened my eyes, feeling like I hadn’t slept more than a few hours. My stomach sank as the events of yesterday came back to me, and in the haze of semi-consciousness I worried it was Tony coming down the stairs.

I rubbed the remnants of sleep from my eyes, remembering that Tony’s room was on ground level and it was unlikely to be him descending. I sat up, feeling the sleeping bag pool around my waist, to see Howard stepping down onto the hardwood floor.

“Morning Peter.” His voice was crisp despite the early hour and he was already showered and dressed, looking every inch the business mogul.

“Morning,” I croaked out in return, feeling suddenly embarrassed of my dishevelled state. A moment later I realised I was being ridiculous, because Howard knew I was sleeping in the living room and would expect the sleep clothes and the bed-head. I chalked it up to the residual discomfort I always felt around the man, the subtle feeling that he was looking down on me, that I wasn’t good enough. 

Howard stepped through into the kitchen to make himself some coffee, and I sank back down into the sofa cushions. I reached over and plucked my phone from the coffee table, unlocking it with a swipe of my thumb.

6:43am. I replaced the phone and rubbed at my eyes again, trying to rouse myself fully into consciousness. I had set my alarm for 7:30, but knew there was no point trying to get back to sleep now. Howard would be moving around before he left for work, and as tired as I was, I knew the presence of the other man would make me too uneasy to get back to sleep.

Well, I was sleeping in the living room now. I guess I’d better get used to the early starts.

I reached for the remote and turned the television on, keeping the volume down as low as possible. I switched to a news channel and waited for the headlines, watching with idle curiosity as I waited for my brain to reboot.

After the headlines had finished, the kitchen door opened behind me and Howard emerged, holding a briefcase in one hand and sipping coffee from a thermos in the other. He nodded once at me as he made his way to the front door of the apartment, pausing to grab a set of keys from a bowl before exiting with a flourish.

A moment later I was rubbing at my eyes again in the silence of the living room, feeling the tension in my shoulders dissipate. I wondered how it was possible for someone to be up and functional so early in the morning. Like other mere mortals, I was still a half-conscious wreck until at least 8 or 9am.

I pulled myself off of the couch, stepping out of the sleeping bag and onto the cold wooden floor. My ears prickled when I noticed the morning wood stretching out my boxers, but I rationalised that there was no one around to see it. Besides, I was sure the little guy would go down soon enough anyway.

I padded over to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of OJ from the fridge. My eyes snagged on the photograph of Tony, Howard and what must have been Maria Stark magnetised to the front, and before I could consciously process the thought, I found my fingers tracing over the faded photo, pausing beneath the open collar of Tony’s shirt. He looked so much younger in the photograph without the dark blue bags under his eyes, almost like a different person. He looked—

He looked happy.

I placed the glass back on the counter and turned away from the fridge, feeling a sudden thickness in my throat. I guessed now was as good as time as any to take my morning shower.

I entered the bathroom and clasped the lock on the kitchen door shut behind me, feeling my stomach clench with the reminder that the bathroom door leading to Tony’s room didn’t have a lock. I slipped my T-shirt off and tugged my boxers down until they pooled at my feet, hopping over the rim of the bathtub and standing beneath the gargantuan shower head. A small part of me felt inexplicably embarrassed of the fact that the rim of the bathtub stood taller than my navel, but I did my best to put the thought out of my mind. I guessed the bathtub, like everything else about the Stark residence, was just bigger than I was used to.

The chrome knobs squealed at me as I twisted them on, making water sputter out the shower head until it stabilised into a firm spray. I winced as the icy water hit me, feeling my morning wood shrivel up from the touch of the liquid. I fiddled with the knobs some more, trying to adjust the temperature until it was something manageable. Eventually I managed to find the sweet spot and stood back into the stream of water.

I sighed contentedly and let the water rush over me, feeling more at peace than I had since I’d arrived at the Stark place. There was something to be said about having an expensive shower, and I felt my whole body loosen as the heat from the water soothed my muscles and relaxed knots of tension that I hadn’t realised I’d been carrying.

I turned to face the shower head, making the hot water cascade down my front. I jolted as one of the jets hit the top of my cockhead and hissed through my teeth, a delicious pleasure twinging through my chest. A hand started the traitorous descent down my lower abdomen, but I came to my senses before it landed in dangerous territory. I knew that sound carried further than you’d expect through an old building like this, and the last thing I needed was to be overheard ‘taking care of business’.

I distracted myself by lathering up with the shower gel I found on the side of the tub, the intense citrus doing even more to rouse me back into wakefulness. My whole body was feeling limber as I rubbed the suds into my chest and abs, and I wondered whether this was what Tony’s skin would smell like if I ever got close enough to sniff him.

Yeah, I could imagine this scent on the older male. On the surface at least, you would smell the lemons, almost dizzyingly fresh. Until you got closer. Then lemon would give way to old sweat and musk, forming a delicious collusion between fruit and flesh. When you ran your teeth along his skin, it would taste— he would, _oh,_ he would—

I heard the bathroom door leading to Tony’s bedroom open, and it was like a glass of cold water had been thrown into my face. My hands shot out to cover myself as the older male entered the room, and I prayed that the shower had been loud enough to cover any mortifying sounds I had just made.

What was he doing in here? Hadn’t he heard me using the shower?

My heart hammered in my chest as I waited in uneasy silence, ears straining for any sound that might tell me what Tony was up to. I became uncomfortably aware that I had only a thin shower curtain to protect my modesty, and that Tony — probably fully clothed — was stood motionless, inches away from me.

I was afraid to even breathe, convinced that Tony would detect the heaviness under my breath and know instantly what I had been doing in here. I felt the muscles in my stomach clench around something prickly and hollow, and I wondered with mounting horror whether _that_ was why Tony had come into the bathroom, whether he was here to play a cruel prank as revenge for last night. Why else would he have come into the bathroom while I was naked?

Tony’s footsteps pattered along the tiled floor as he walked over to — the toilet? The sink? — and then faded into another anxiety-ridden stretch of silence.

Water gurgled in the drain and a shutter banged against a window frame. Somewhere in the distance, a door slammed shut.

A stream of piss hit the toilet water, and the tension in my body immediately slackened. _Oh_.

Then the relief turned into a weird, fluttery feeling and my cheeks grew hot.

_He had his, his—_

_He'd taken it out, just a few feet away from me!_

I didn’t know how I felt about him using the bathroom while I was stood naked in the shower. It’s not like I had a biological brother to compare with, but his behaviour couldn’t have been normal, could it? Was I the weird one for reacting like this?

My flush deepened as the piss stream carried on, and a small, crazy part of me wondered whether Tony was doing this on purpose, making me as uncomfortable as possible as some weird form of punishment for last night. I kept my gaze trained resolutely on my feet as I waited for him to finish his business and leave.

I heard the last few drips of piss into the toilet as he finished up, and then Tony let out a satisfied sigh. The sound seemed to make something ‘pull’ in the bottom of my stomach, and my knees turned to jelly as Tony shuffled out of the bathroom.

I gutted out a breath as the door closed behind him, unsure what to make of the last few minutes. A hand steadied myself against the tiled wall and I clenched it into a fist, willing my heart to stop racing. There was gooseflesh along my arms and my breath was audibly laboured beneath the slap of water against porcelain.

I twisted the shower knobs until the stream sputtered out, returning the bathroom to an icy silence. I pulled back the shower curtain and hopped out onto the tiled floor, beads of water dripping off my body to pool underneath me.

It was a weird sensation to think that Tony had been stood here a few moments earlier, in such close proximity to my naked body. I was definitely not used to having so little privacy, and I felt the overwhelming urge to cover up and re-dress as quickly as possible.

I looked around the bathroom for a towel, and found myself stopping short.

 _Crap_.

Back in our old apartment, Aunt May had kept a cupboard full of clean towels just inside the bathroom doorway. Looking around, I only saw bare walls and an empty towel rack.

I rushed over to the cabinet beneath the sink and flung open the doors. Cleaning supplies and some medicine. _Shit_. There was nothing I could use, not even a hand towel.

I hesitated a moment, feeling the panic ratchet up. Glanced at the sad heap of my boxers lying at the foot of the bathtub.

Should I just put them back on, wet? Go back into the living room until I found a towel?

Or, or maybe—

I stared at the door leading into the kitchen and wondered if I should chance it. Aunt May wouldn’t be up, and Tony had probably gone back to his room by now… It would probably be ok.

With a tightening sensation in my stomach, I settled on a course of action. I was going to make a break for it.

I cracked open the door to the kitchen, experiencing a strange dizziness that verged on delirium.

Empty.

I tiptoed over to the door to the living room, tracking small puddles of water as I went. I peered around the door frame as I kept my hands locked firmly over my genitals, trying to ignore the humiliation pooling in the pit of my stomach.

I sank with relief when I saw the living room was empty as well.

I kept myself covered as I jolted back into the room, racing over to the boxes in the corner. I rifled through my things with both hands, searching desperately for a towel. If anyone walked into the living room right now, they would get a full view of my naked rear.

I tried not to think about the two massive windows streaming light into the room.

I pulled open the lid of the third box and sagged with relief. One fluffy white towel, lying underneath an assortment of toiletries. I snatched the material and wrapped it tight around my waist, thanking every god that was out there that I hadn’t been interrupted before then. I would have died if Tony had caught me naked on the first day after moving in, there were no two ways about it.

I dried myself off and pulled on some new boxer briefs underneath the towel, keeping it firmly wrapped around my waist. I rummaged around until I found a graphic tee and some new jeans to pull on over the underwear. Moments later I was fully dressed and combing through my hair in one of the mirrors on the living room wall.

My heart was still pounding in my chest, but my stomach had unclenched now that the immediate danger was over. My ears were still prickling with heat and I was parched. I didn’t think I’d finished the OJ from earlier.

I found the half-empty glass on the kitchen counter and lifted it to my lips, drinking greedily from its contents.

And then promptly retched and spat the mouthful of orange juice across the kitchen floor. My stomach heaved and I gagged on the disgusting aftertaste, feeling the contents of my stomach contemplate joining the OJ. My hand covered my mouth and I shuddered in revulsion, willing the intense aftertaste to fade from my tongue.

“Gross,” I said, pulling another face as I stumbled over to the sink and spat into it. Spitting another three times did little to clear the flavour from my mouth.

God, that had tasted like— it had tasted—

I couldn’t even _think_ it.

My stomach heaved again as I pulled a fresh glass from the cupboard and filled it at the tap. I swished the water around my mouth and spat it into the sink, but the motions did little to cut through the aftertaste lingering on my tongue. I felt my stomach churn and hoped that I hadn’t just given myself food poisoning from drinking OJ that had obviously spoiled.

I pulled some kitchen roll off the counter and mopped up the sticky orange juice on the floor, wondering how I had managed to drink it earlier without noticing the rancid taste. I must have been half-asleep, too foggy to notice how awful it had tasted.

A small note of confusion settled in the back of my mind as I finished cleaning up the floor, but I did my best to put it out of my head.

Brushing my teeth did a little more to cut through the aftertaste, and I made sure to grab my discarded clothes from the bathroom floor before returning to the living room.

It was still too early to get the train, but I didn’t want to hang around the apartment any longer. I gathered my phone and plucked my school bag off the floor, deciding a walk around the block would clear my head before school.

🐝 🐝 🐝

“No, Ned, I don’t think Coach Wilson’s brain is being controlled by aliens.”

“But it’s weird, right? That man was drinking way too much water in gym class.”

I closed my locker and hauled my backpack onto my shoulders, beginning the long trudge towards homeroom.

“So? You know what those fitness freaks are like. Today it’s 8 ounces of water, tomorrow it’ll be nothing but celery juice and raw oysters.”

We wove around the clusters of other teens dotting the hallway, making sure to give the jocks a particularly wide berth.

Ned’s voice grew determined, undeterred by my scepticism. “Whichever way you cut it, the man’s shifty, Peter! You saw the way he was eyeing Liz in her workout gear.”

I barked out a laugh and rolled my eyes at him. “He was not! You’re just bitter he made us climb the rope.”

Ned made a protesting noise in his throat and his shoulders seemed to slump. “Climbing the rope should be outlawed, it’s just an excuse for the jocks to show off in front of the girls.”

“Hey, man, I’m with you on that one. MJ had the right idea skipping school today.”

Ned’s grin was triumphant. “I knew it! ‘Scratchy throat’ my ass, she’s probably at a Greenpeace protest or something.”

“Nah Ned, haven’t you been keeping up? This week it’s all about the non-recyclable plastics.”

We continued on in a companionable silence, the buzz of hallway chatter filling the air between us.

Ned’s voice grew significant. “So…”

I looked at him, nonplussed. “So?”

“You know.”

I felt my stomach clench. “What do I know?”

“It must be hard work keeping up with all of MJ’s causes. But you always seem to manage.” His comment sounded deliberately lighthearted, to the point of being contrived.

“It’s called being a good friend, Ned.” I winced as I heard the defensiveness creep into my tone.

“Hmm. Okay.” Ned’s voice was as anodyne as if he was discussing the weather.

“Ned—”

“Yeah, makes sense. Totally. It’s just being a good friend. Nothing— nothing _else_ , right, Peter?”

I bit out a groan between clenched teeth. “Ned—”

“Because you know you could tell me if it was? Anything else, I mean.”

“Ned!”

He finally seemed to relent, but not before shooting me a self-satisfied smirk. “Okay Peter, I’ll drop it. For now.”

“Thank you.”

There were a few more beats of silence before he spoke again. “So what’s it like living with the Starks?”

I grinned sheepishly at him. “Something, um— something happened.”

My tone of voice must have given it away.

“Oh no, Peter, what did you do?”

I paused, the cringe flaring back up in me as I remembered. I felt an unpleasant sensation in my gut as I relived the experience in my mind.

“Well, there’s a pretty big chance that Tony, uh, read our Discord conversation from last night.” I awkwardly scratched at the back of my head.

“Our Discord conversation? Oh— where you called him a deadbeat loser?”

Ned was doing absolutely nothing to quell my nerves.

“Well, those weren’t my exact words, but—”

“How could you let that happen?” Ned sounded as distraught as I felt. “What if I want to come over with my Lego? He’s gonna think I called him those things too!”

My throat tightened, and it was suddenly difficult to meet Ned’s eyes. “I don’t know Ned, I don’t know! I guess I just. It just sort of happened? I didn’t lock my laptop. I don’t know why he was looking at it, but now he’s seen it and he thinks I called him a stupid dropout!”

“Steady there Peter, take a breath, relax.” I realised I was starting to hyperventilate and made a conscious effort to breathe more deeply and slowly, but I couldn’t stop my face crumpling up.

“I think I screwed everything up,” I admitted.

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think it is, Peter. Besides, it’s nearly impossible to stay mad at you. Have you tried talking to him?”

“I tried last night, but he didn’t want to talk. I think I’m gonna have to try again after school, but what if it’s too late? What if he hates me, what will I tell Aunt May?”

“You can still fix this. Just tell him you’re sorry and you didn’t mean it.”

I swallowed, feeling my stomach churn at the prospect of having another conversation with Tony.

“The worst part is, the things I said couldn’t have been further from the truth. He went to MIT, Ned, on a full scholarship.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, he’s obviously some sort of genius. We probably could have been friends if I hadn’t ruined it.” I found myself wishing for the thousandth time that I could wave a magic wand and undo the stupid mistake.

We walked on in silence for another few moments.

“So why did he drop out of college if he had a full scholarship to MIT? That’s crazy.” Ned’s voice mirrored the puzzlement in my own head.

“I don’t know Ned, I didn’t get that far in the conversation. But something obviously went down. And you can tell that he despises Howard, there’s some bad blood there.”

Ned was quiet for another few moments as he thought about it, and I turned the puzzle over in my mind again. It was frustrating not having all the answers, and a part of me was wondering if I would ever get them after last night.

“Well you’re gonna have to do something to make it right, Peter. Otherwise it’s going to be hell living with him.”

“I know, Ned, I know. Tonight, I’ll make it right. Whatever it takes.”

I huffed out a breath and plastered a smile on my face, determined not to let it get to me.

“And Ned? You let me know if Coach Wilson ever tries to stab you with a pencil.”

🐝 🐝 🐝

I winced as the sweater clung to my body, sodden with rainwater and absolutely freezing. My trainers squelched as I trudged back towards the Stark residence, a relentless chill gnawing through me every step of the way. My fingers were long since numbed to the cold and the chill was in the process of penetrating every fibre of my body.

The day had held up until I had just about gotten off the train, and then the heavens had opened up and drenched the streets, the pavements and my clothes.

I kicked at the sodden leaves clogging the gutter, my trainer passing through the mass with a satisfying squish. I was so saturated with liquid that there was no point trying to stay dry, no longer anything to be gained from hurrying home. It was the kind of rain that permeated everything, that didn’t care how many layers you were wearing or which articles of clothing had proclaimed their water resistance on the store rack.

I was a shivering wreck by the time I reached the apartment block, keys clawed between numb fingers as I fumbled back into the building. The door closed behind me with a loud clang, and the outside patter of rain was muffled behind thick oak. A conciliatory breath wheezed out of me, my shoulders slumping now that I was finally out of the deluge. I frowned when I saw that none of the lights in the lobby were on, and I was forced to traverse by the scant illumination from the overcast sky.

I slumped against the wall of the elevator, casting tired eyes at my reflection. There were no two ways about it, I was absolutely drenched. My navy sweater was glued to my body with liquid and you could see the lines of my stomach cutting through the thin material.

The elevator dinged open onto the eighteenth floor and I dragged myself towards the apartment, leaving small puddles of water as I went. I brushed the wet fringe from my face and sucked in a shivering breath, impatient for the warm press of dry clothes on my skin.

My keys rattled in the door as it swung open, and I stepped through into a living room that was as dark as the lobby had been. I peeled off my jumper and hung it on the nearby radiator, pulling a face at the unpleasant squelch of the sodden fabric. I hissed as the waterlogged T-shirt dragged across my chest, sending a renewed wave of gooseflesh down the back of my neck. I dumped the T-shirt next to my jumper on the radiator, rubbing at my arms to resuscitate some warmth to my naked torso.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I shimmied it out of my soaking jeans.

It was May.

 **Going out to dinner with Howard. We'll** **be back late, order a pizza! xxx**

I winced at the phone, not sure how I felt about being left alone in the apartment all evening with Tony. I flicked on the living room lights, formulating a reply in my head.

“That’s funny, I don’t recall ordering a stripper.”

My blood turned to ice and I jolted back. My arms flew up, desperate to cover my shirtless chest. “T-Tony! I didn’t see—”

My sentence trailed off, giving way to a taut silence. Tony was sat on one of the leather couches, his body so still it was like looking at a statue. His gaze raked over my body, scoured me, left my skin feeling flushed and tingling with nervous dread.

My arms hovered over my chest, then my stomach, before settling loosely around my sternum, folding to cover as much skin as possible.

When the tension grew too unbearable to manage, I tried again. “Um. W-why were you just sitting here in the dark?”

I felt an uncomfortable prickle of realisation as I took in the squared shoulders, the raised chin. Had he been waiting for me to come home? 

Tony’s smile bared large, glistening teeth. “Cute. Questioning me in my own home.”

 _Shit_. “Tony, that’s not— I didn’t mean, I—”

He chuckled, and there was nothing warm in the sound. “I’m just playing with you Pete. I know you’re not a stripper.” His eyes made another pass down my torso, and his smile turned cruel. “Besides, wouldn’t you be a sorry state.”

A hot wave of humiliation seemed to swell through my body, spreading through my skin like an icy flush. My hands burned with the need to snatch up the wet jumper from where I’d left it draped over the radiator.

Why was he being so mean to me?

_Oh._

“Tony, about last night—”

He was quick to cut me off. “Are the pants coming off next?”

My ears burned with heat. The way he was talking to me was giving me an awful feeling of nakedness, of being on display.

He didn’t leave me any time to formulate a response.

“Gosh Peter, you’re trembling. I didn’t realise the apartment was so cold.” His voice was taunting, gaining a mocking edge.

I found myself crossing and uncrossing my arms, then holding my palms against my thighs. I tried to ignore the strangling pressure I could feel constricting my throat.

“Please, can we just talk about—”

Tony’s voice slashed like a knife. “No. Be quiet.”

My mouth snapped shut as if he had fitted me with a muzzle. Something seemed to glisten in his beetle-black eyes when he noticed.

Tony shifted on the couch and stood, rising to his full height. My mouth went dry as he approached, halting close enough that I could smell the toothpaste on his breath.

Tony looked down his nose at me, his expression rankling like he had smelt something unpleasant. His gaze dropped from my eyes to my mouth, to my throat, and then down my bare chest to the waistband of my jeans.

His voice was thick with disapproval. “Isn’t it time you threw those out? You’ve worn them until they’re threadbare.”

My shoulders hunched and my fingers dug into my elbows. I felt my hands itch, torn between covering my torso and my tatty jeans.

“And they’re much too big for you. Look at the waist! I guess your aunt couldn’t afford a pair that fit, huh.”

There was a hot tingling in my face and neck, and I had to pinch my lips together.

“Couldn’t afford a belt either, from the looks of things.”

I hurried to pull up the waistband of my jeans, feeling my stomach harden with nausea. I shrank back as Tony raised a hand, almost yelping when he ran his knuckle down the back of my arm.

“You don’t feel very cold, Peter. I don’t know why you keep trembling.” The feigned puzzlement in his voice could barely constrain the vicious undercurrent I could detect beneath it.

“Please,” I uttered the one-word plea, begging him to stop.

He leaned forward until his face was inches from my own, stared me dead in the eyes, and sniffed.

“Nice cologne. Axe? How… inspired.” His mouth curled into a sardonic smile.

I gave an uncontrollable shiver and felt my hands clutch at my stomach.

“Does your girlfriend like it?”

“W-what? Why are you asking?”

His eyes pierced me like dagger points and a trickle of sweat beaded on my forehead. He let the silence stretch out, and I filled it with stuttered breaths.

Tony’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “I want to know if your girlfriend likes the way you smell.”

My knees knocked together, and I found myself angling my body away from him. “Do we have to talk about this?”

“It’s a simple question Peter. Why won’t you answer?”

My chin dropped and it was difficult to keep meeting his eyes. My arms crossed in front of my chest, and I took a small step away from him.

“I don’t know why you’re so interested.” Even I could hear the shakiness underlying my attempted diversion, the panic.

Tony’s voice was sharp, denying me a second of leeway. “Answer me!”

“It’s just Axe body spray, I don’t know what you want!” 

I huffed and dropped my eyes, tracing the Tony-shaped indent on the leather couch. My T-shirt and boxers were laying on the cushion next to it, where I’d dumped them after my shower.

“Stop avoiding my eyes, Peter.”

My gaze snapped back to his face and the strangling pressure returned, crushing me like a fist. “I wasn’t—”

“Do you have something to hide?”

The breath choked out of me and there was an awful tension in the back of my neck. “What would I be hiding?”

“You tell me.” His voice was soft, for all that his implications were sharp.

“There’s nothing to tell!” I instantly regretted the defensiveness in my tone, the way my voice had risen like I was being backed into a corner.

Tony squared his shoulders and pinned me between steely eyes. I felt my resolve crumble to dust in the face of his imposing bone structure, his features sharpened like those of a vicious dog. 

The answer eeked out of me in a whimper. “No.”

“No? She doesn’t like your Axe body spray?” The intensity in Tony’s eyes did not let up for a moment, and there was a faint dusting of colour lighting his cheekbones, of _excitement_.

I muttered it like a defeat. “No Tony. I don’t— um. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Tony’s grin was exultant, and his eyes danced fiercely. “Imagine that.”

I staggered away from him, backing into the living room wall. My breathing was as laboured as if I’d sprinted up the eighteen floors to the apartment.

“Why are you doing this?”

Tony’s lips pulled into a disappointed frown. “Oh Peter, is that really all you can muster?” 

My stomach sank and my shoulders curled in on my body. “You’re not playing fair!” I bit out.

“Why would I?” The casual façade dropped like a curtain, giving way to sizzling fury. “I’m just a deadbeat loser, remember? What was the word you used? Oh, that’s right… ‘Pathetic’.” His gaze scoured over my body as he said the last word, and I shrank back from the viciousness in his tone.

I was still reeling from the comment when he reached out and slid the phone straight out of my pocket.

“H-hey!”

“What’s this piece of shit? I thought you _liked to build things, like robotics and electronics,_ ” he scoffed, imitating Aunt May’s comment from yesterday at dinner.

It was hard to find my voice through the fear, through the humiliation. “That’s— I-I don’t usually find parts small enough for, um, for a ph-phone.”

Tony looked at me like I had just confessed to murdering a puppy. “‘Find’? What do you mean, ‘find’?”

The breath squeezed out of me. “Nothing! It was just a slip of the tongue.”

There was a horrible moment of stunned silence that made my stomach lurch.

“Holy shit. It’s true isn’t it? You’re a _dumpster diver_.” He purred the words at me like they were something depraved. “You actually scrounge around in other peoples’ trash, don’t you!” Tony laughed, a full body chuckle that had his shoulders shaking.

I felt a tingling in my nose and a burning ache in the back of my throat.

“Jesus christ, Peter. Don’t pull that face at me. Looking like the saddest puppy on the planet.”

I don’t know what it was that finally did it. Whether it was the fear of what he might do to me, or the way he was making me feel like the smallest, most pathetic human on earth.

The first tears squeezed out of my eyes, dripping down my cheeks and onto my chest.

Oh god, now I was crying in front of him. It couldn’t get any worse than this.

Tony was only too eager to keep pressing his advantage, now that he’d reduced me to tears. “You’re vermin, Peter. A rodent. Begging for other people’s garbage. Scrabbling for it on your hands and your knees.”

My body heaved and my fingernails stabbed into my palms.

“Hilarious, really, that you of all people would accuse me of being a deadbeat. When what are you? Why not turn those incisive observation skills onto your own life?”

The laboured breaths and the sniffling only seemed to spur Tony on.

“Or are you too scared of what you’d see? I’ll say it for you then. We’re all thinking it anyway.”

He just wouldn’t stop.

“Four months!” Tony uttered the words like they were something to be savoured. “Delightfully soon for Aunt May to be moving in with a guy she’s just starting seeing, isn’t it? Some might even say — _desperately_ soon. Must’ve been love at first sight, right?”

Tony chuckled, a mirthless sound. “Or was it you?”

I felt the acid in my stomach rise up the back of my throat.

“Did you really think Aunt May chose to move in with Howard? Or was she forced to, once you’d left her with no other options? After you’d drained up all of her money. After you’d eaten her out of house and home.”

A guttural sound tore out of my throat. 

“Can you imagine what kind of burden you’ve been on your aunt, Peter?”

“No, I—” I could almost _taste_ the self-loathing, like a bitter ash scraped over the surface of my tongue.

“And you’re really gonna sit there and call me a deadbeat?” Tony shook his head at me. “You have any idea what kind of man your aunt has invited into her bed, because of you?”

Something desperate and hopeless seemed to yawn inside my chest, tearing me open until everything was hollow. My body caved in on itself, my shoulders hunching as my stomach collapsed into a tight ball.

I cried until my eyes burned and my throat hurt and everything felt raw and over-sensitised.

Oh god. I couldn’t keep it in any more. I, I— it was _everything_. The move. Tony. I missed my old apartment, I missed— I-I missed Uncle Ben. There was— I had to— there was—

Tony basked in the anguish he was causing, his eyes drinking in the sight of me like he was desperate to commit every second of it to memory. He watched me fall apart in quiet satisfaction, before he finally seemed to grow bored of my suffering, turning on his heel to walk back to his bedroom.

The bedroom door slammed behind him, and I felt the tension in me release as if I’d just had my strings cut. And then I collapsed on the floor, having a panic attack and feeling more lost and alone than I had since Uncle Ben had died.

I’d never felt more humiliated in my life, more ashamed. I felt small and insignificant, a piece of human garbage. Tony hadn’t just insulted me, hadn’t just humiliated me — he’d used everything he could think of to ruin me, sought out all my most humiliating secrets, all my unspoken fears to reduce me to this. There had been no stone left unturned, no comment held back. Every second had been deliberate. He’d even waited in the living room for me to come home from school, choosing the moment he wouldn’t be interrupted by Howard or Aunt May.

I felt physically sick from the unfairness of it, the injustice. Why did Tony have to do that to me, didn’t he know how shitty my life already was? How much of a mess things were? Did he have any idea how hard it was to be poor, to have to scrounge for other peoples’ trash because Aunt May could barely afford to make rent as it was? 

No clue, he had no clue. I felt incredibly sorry for myself as I wiped the tears away, sorry for myself and angry that I hadn’t been able to do anything to stop him, that I had behaved so weakly. I sniffled as I thought about how I hadn’t even put up a fight, I’d just stood there and acted like my usual submissive self instead of doing something to stop him. I hated confrontation, and I hated the fact that I never knew how to act while it was happening. It was only afterwards, going over what had happened again and again in my head, that I realised what I should have done, how I should have behaved.

I found myself praying for a miracle, like I always did in situations like this. It was a fantasy I had been slipping into more and more lately, as my life continued to go to shit around me. I knew I had deep seated issues, scars left by my parents’ death and then Uncle Ben, and lately it was developing into an almost unhealthy fixation over the fact that I was a bystander in my own life, powerless to stop any of the awful things happening.

I rubbed at my eyes again and tried to distract myself from my spiralling thoughts. It wouldn’t do to keep dwelling, there was nothing I could do about it now. I couldn’t control the things that happened in my life around me, but I could exert some small control over the way I responded to them, the way my body reacted.

It was the only kind of strength I had left, when all other strength had failed me.

I slowly pulled myself to my feet and trudged over to the living room mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and my cheeks were red and splotchy, as they usually were after a crying spell. I sucked in a stuttered breath as I looked at my reflection and found myself becoming more and more disgusted with the person looking back at me.

Why did I have to be _so_ pathetic.

My gaze dropped and my hands clenched in front of my stomach, feeling small and powerless. I was standing on the precipice of an awful emptiness as I stood there in the living room, something as vast and insurmountable as an ocean. I distracted myself by pulling on a dry T-shirt and changing out of the wet jeans, shrugging into a pair of sweats I found in one of my boxes, but it did little to pull me from the downward spiral. 

Maybe food would be a better distraction from my thoughts.

I was halfway to preparing a ham and cheese sandwich in the kitchen when I felt the strong urge to piss. My gaze traced the door to the bathroom, feeling a small knot of anxiety at the prospect of having to go in there again. I wondered if I should just use Howard’s bathroom upstairs, so I wouldn't risk coming into contact with Tony. I hated that the door to his bedroom didn’t lock, but I supposed I would just have to get used to it. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to use the bathroom upstairs when Howard was in, and it was a bad habit to let myself get into.

I entered Tony’s bathroom, relieved to find it deserted. I hesitated a moment, listening for any sound from the next room.

Silence.

I pulled down the front of my sweats and pissed into the bowl, feeling my heart rate climb with the residual anxiety about being interrupted.

I finished my business and pulled my sweats back up, shuffling over to wash my hands in the sink. It was when I was looking into the mirror that I noticed it, and I found myself turning around to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.

Over by the bathtub, there were now two white towels hung over the towel rack.

How on earth had I missed them this morning after my shower? I was sure I’d checked everywhere. I tried to visualise the bathroom from my memories, and was certain the rack had been empty. I wasn’t crazy, if the towels had been there this morning I would have spotted them! I was sure of it.

I twisted the tap off and turned the problem over in my mind, remembering that Tony had come into the bathroom mid-shower to piss.

My brow furrowed as I thought of the new possibility. Would he really have taken the towels out of the bathroom, just to be petty? Give me an unwelcome shock?

But then, he hadn’t come out into the living room to catch me naked. Hadn’t done anything to capitalise on my humiliation.

Maybe I was being paranoid and there was another explanation. Maybe Tony had just put the towels there to dry after using them for his own shower, while I was at school.

I shook my head to clear away the thoughts, deciding I was being overly suspicious.

I returned to the kitchen and was halfway to taking a bite out of my sandwich when my mobile rang, and I saw Ned’s face smiling up at me from the screen.

I contemplated letting it go to voicemail, but decided I didn’t want to be a bad friend. And, if I was being honest with myself, I could probably use the distraction from my problems.

“Uh, hey Ned.”

“Peter! You must be freaking out.”

For a split second I thought Ned had found out about my fight with Tony. Then I realised how ridiculous that idea was, and that Ned was clearly talking about something else.

“Whoa, slow down bud. What’s this about?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

“You didn’t see it? How can you not have seen it?”

I felt my stomach flip, wondering what else was about to go wrong with my day.

“Seen what?”

“I can’t believe you haven’t seen it!”

My temple bulged in irritation and a sudden fury seemed to flare up in me, out of nowhere. “For christ’s sake, Ned, just spit it out already.”

There was another prolonged pause, one that seemed to drag out even more than the first had. I couldn’t even hear Ned breathing on the other end of the line.

“—Is everything okay, Peter?”

The anger dissipated as quickly as it had come on, giving way to a roil of shame.

“It’s, uh, fine. Everything’s peachy.”

“Did something hap—”

“I don’t want to talk about it Ned.”

I knew I was being rude, but I just didn’t have the energy to mince words. Ned was courteous enough not to call me out on it, but it didn’t stop me swallowing a small pellet of guilt, feeling it settle next to the hard lump of my stomach.

“Right. Um, you should probably look at MJ’s instagram.”

I dragged the phone away from my ear and flicked open the instagram app, pulling up MJ’s feed.

I raised the phone back to my ear. “Oh.”

“Oh? That’s it? Peter—”

“I guess it’s nice MJ made a new friend.”

There was a stunned silence.

“A new friend? Peter! She lied to us. MJ wasn’t sick at all, she skipped school to go on a date with Brad at Coney Island!”

I heard a rustling in Tony’s bathroom and a thick wave of nausea seemed to snake through my guts. I hurriedly left the kitchen and closed the door behind me, deciding it was safer to continue the phone call out in the living room.

What had we been talking about? I suddenly felt sluggish and exhausted, my shoulders slumping as I contemplated laying out on one of the couches.

“Peter?”

Oh, right. “You don’t know that, Ned. Maybe MJ just ran into him, or maybe they already had plans to meet after school? It’s really none of our business.”

“None of our— okay Peter, drop the act. I know you must be freaking out.”

I pulled a hand through my hair, feeling the frustration climb.

“I’m not freaking out, Ned! I’m happy for her.”

Ned actually had the gall to laugh at me when I said it. “Bullshit! I don’t buy that for one second.”

I ground my teeth, fighting back the urge to snap at him.

“I don’t care who she wants to date. I hope MJ and Brad are very happy together!”

It came out sounding more bitter than I wanted to admit, but not for the reasons Ned was thinking. I was just annoyed at the whole situation, about the fact that I didn’t have the time or the energy to get caught up in this highschool drama because I had so much other crap to deal with. Like worrying about how I was gonna survive living in the same apartment as Tony Stark. Like worrying about how we might end up getting kicked to the street.

“I know you like her Peter. Don’t pretend that you don’t.”

For some reason, it was this last accusation that did it. I felt a hot gash of fury spike through my stomach.

“Stop just assuming I like MJ like that! God, shouldn’t I get to decide? Isn’t that the sort of thing I get to decide for myself?” I knew it wasn’t fair of me to shout at Ned, but I had just had enough.

We fell into an uneasy silence, one that wasn’t like us at all.

“Okay Peter. Sorry for bringing it up. I just thought you should know.”

From the tone of Ned’s voice, I could tell he was hurt by my outburst. I felt a sudden flare of shame about the way I had acted. It wasn’t Ned’s fault I was having such an awful time with Tony.

“Ned, listen, I—”

“I’m gonna have to go, Peter, my mom is calling. See you in school tomorrow.”

“Ned—”

“Bye Peter.”

The line went dead before I could get another word in, and I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at it forlornly.

Great. What else was I gonna mess up?

I left my mobile on the coffee table and trudged back to the kitchen to grab my sandwich, though I wasn’t feeling particularly hungry any more. I brought it out to the living room and sank into one of the couches, trying my hardest not to mope. Today just really wasn’t my day, was it?

I forced myself to take a bite of the sandwich and made a face at how gross it tasted, realising that the conversation with Ned had made me too nauseous to eat. I made myself swallow and took another bite, hoping if I powered through that my taste buds would numb and the ham and cheese would become palatable. On the third bite I decided there was definitely something off with the sandwich, and wondered if it had anything to do with the unfamiliar brand of ham I had found in the fridge earlier.

I peeled the bread away from the cheese and felt my stomach knot in confusion.

_What the fuck?_

A dull ringing sounded in my ears as I stared at the gelatinous brown paste that had been smeared across the underside of the bread. I hadn’t remembered adding pâté to the sandwich, was I really just so out of it after the fight with Tony that—

I could have hit myself when I realised.

I had been a fool to leave my sandwich unsupervised in the kitchen. He must’ve done it while I was talking with Ned in the living room, seizing another opportunity to fuck with me, to ruin my day. But why had Tony smeared pâté over my sandwich, of all things? Was it meant to be another jab at how poor I was, at how my palette was too unrefined to enjoy rich people food?

As far as digs went, it seemed pretty weak.

I felt distinctly dizzy as I dumped the sandwich back on the plate and rose to my feet, treading over to the kitchen in something of a haze. My fingers were white as they scrabbled for the door handle of the fridge, and I stared blankly at the contents once I had it open.

My expression slackened and I felt more and more detached as I scanned over the rows of food. It felt like I couldn’t get enough air, like I was experiencing a weird sort of vertigo that had starved my brain of oxygen.

The panic seemed to stir when I found myself doing a third pass over the shelves without finding the pâté, and I began hunting through the contents of the fridge with both hands. I was pulling things out, clawing through the condiments, searching behind every container and bottle.

Nothing.

I shut the fridge door and found myself scrabbling around the kitchen shelves in a panic, becoming more and more hysterical the longer my search went on. I opened up cupboards, poured through the pantry and jostled everything in my search for the damn pâté.

A stroke of insight had me opening up the bin, and then everything seemed to go quiet under the violent ringing in my ears. A hand reached out to clasp around the metal can and I slumped back into a dining chair, the energy in my legs giving out. I twisted the can around, peeling off the yellow post-it note that had been stuck to the front.

I took in the vicious scrawl with a dizzying sense of detachment, like I was viewing it from behind a thick pane of glass.

_“For the Mutt.”_

I distantly registered the fact that the word ‘Mutt’ had been underlined twice, seeing it through a fuzzy sense of unreality. And then my fingers went limp and the half-empty can of dog food clanged against the wooden table.

There was a growing _something_ in my stomach, a sensation I couldn’t put words to. I felt it spreading through me, like a tumour, and it _hurt_ , like an ache.

_He had left it for me to find. He had left it—_

My field of vision shrank to the size of a pinprick, and I could hear this awful, raspy breathing coming from my mouth.

_He had—_

I crashed back onto my feet, my vision swimming with spots. I stumbled over to the living room, passing through the doorway on limbs that felt frantic and unstable.

I reached the door to Tony’s bedroom and squeezed the handle between rigid fingers. The door swung inward, and I stumbled into his room.

The sight of him hit me like a sucker punch.

Tony was laying on his bed in just his grey, brand name boxer briefs, playing on an iPhone and looking utterly blasé. He shot me a look that was supposed to be bored, but I could see his eyes burning with a quiet glee.

I wrenched my eyes away from him, hating the way my body reacted, even now. I noticed that the walls of his bedroom were violently red, ketchup red, and his shelves were stacked with scientific-looking encyclopedias and half-finished engineering projects.

The words climbed my throat like vomit.

“Why?” I moaned. “Why did you do that to me?”

Tony’s eyes flicked back down to his phone and his thumb idly brushed at the front of the screen. “Do what, Peter?”

“My sandwich. You put—” I wheezed, hoarsely. “D-d-dog f-f—” I couldn’t even say it. My face was _burning_ with the humiliation of what he’d made me do, of what he’d made me swallow. “You— you violated me.”

I could feel Tony’s dry chuckle settle inside my lower abdomen as he twisted his muscular body, placing his phone on the bedside table. A moment later, he propped himself up against his headboard and reached an arm back to casually grip the top of the oak, his muscles flexing as he tensed them.

“You should be thanking me.”

It was hard not to stare at his bare chest, or the smattering of armpit hair I could see peeking out under his tensed bicep.

“Thanking you? Why on _earth_ would I do that?” My voice cracked embarrassingly midway through the question, evoking another smirk from the older male.

“Free food, wasn’t it? And I didn’t even make you dive through a dumpster to get it.”

A wounded, punctured sound seemed to fall out of my throat of its own volition. My mouth hung open, and I wordlessly shook my head at him. 

“What, too proud to beg for scraps from the Stark table?” Tony gave another of his nasty chuckles, languidly drawing the sound out. “Your aunt wasn’t.”

I sucked the air between my teeth, feeling something hot and wet growing inside my stomach. This wasn’t making anything better, this wasn’t—

“You c-c-can’t keep d-doing this.”

“What was that? You’re always mumbling, Peter. You need to SPEAK LOUDER.”

I felt my flush spread to the tips of my ears. “It’s not okay. You can’t keep saying these things to me.”

Tony’s voice was as loud and as clear as a gong. “I can do whatever I want to you, Peter.”

It was almost impossible to swallow past the watermelon-sized lump in my throat. My fingers dug into my palms, leaving crescent shaped cuts in my skin.

“Like putting dog food in my sandwiches?” It was hard to maintain the grip on my voice, to hold back the wavering.

Tony stretched his legs out and laced his hands behind his head. Only once he had taken the time to settle into a comfier position did he nod at me, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement.

How was it possible for him to be so brazen? To not be ashamed of what he’d done?

Had he enjoyed it that much? Or worse, did he think I’d _deserved_ it?

“Like taking away my towels when I’m in the shower?” There was something barely controlled in the way I was speaking, something that threatened to give way to hysteria.

Tony’s half-smirk was all the confirmation I needed, this time. “Those were my towels, Peter. I simply declined to lend them to you.”

“By taking them out of the bathroom, while I was stood n— while I was stood there, in the shower?”

“So over-dramatic!” Tony rolled his eyes at me and flicked at a piece of lint on his boxer briefs. “I didn’t take your clothes out the bathroom as well. It’s not like I left you with nothing.”

I felt my body stiffen up like a plank of driftwood. “What else, Tony? What else are you going to do to me?”

Tony’s eyes bored into my face, and I could see the amusement dancing in them, like he’d pulled one over on me, like he’d already managed to—

I experienced a sudden, awful moment of epiphany, and then the violent ringing in my ears grew to a cacophony.

“Tony.” The word was tight and controlled as it slid out of my throat.

“Peter.” He was still smirking, like he was waiting in feverish anticipation for the other shoe to drop.

“My orange juice—” I could barely get the words out, the ringing in my ears was so loud.

“I don’t think now’s really the time for a drink, Peter.”

“Did you do it?” I clenched my hands against my sides, trying to stop the violent trembling. “Did you put something in my orange juice this morning?”

Tony could see the effect he was having on me, could see how badly I was reacting.

He pulled himself off of the bed in slow motions, cracking his shoulders once he was stood at his full height. He padded over to stand in front of me, his bare feet slapping along the wooden floor.

I had to raise my chin to keep looking into his smoldering eyes.

It came out of him barely above a whisper. “Like what?”

The next breath rattled out of me and I could feel something awful bleeding into the edges of my vision.

“You know what you did.”

Tony leaned in, eager to get even closer to my face. “I don’t know what—”

“Don’t lie to me!” I squared my shoulders, feeling the heat burning through my cheeks again. Only this time, it didn’t feel like humiliation. This time, it felt like fury.

Tony loomed over me, and I could see a subtle flex in the muscles of his torso as he drew in an eager breath. I tried not to think of the fact that he was stood there in just his tight boxer briefs.

“What did you put in my drink!”

Tony leaned even closer, his mouth curving into another of his self-satisfied smirks.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, kid.” He bared his teeth at me as if in challenge, and folded his arms in front of his chest, making the fat muscles in his arms bulge at me as they squeezed together. 

I could feel the anger in my cheeks spread down to the back of my throat, until it felt like I was sucking in burning, sand-gritted air with every inhale.

“Say it, Tony. Tell me what you— tell me what you made me swallow.” It took a Herculean effort to get the sentence out.

“Honestly, Pete, it sounds like you’re getting paranoid.”

Something about his condescending, smug little tone made me lose it.

“Tony-what was-gross-dr…dri…drink!” I yelled, feeling myself becoming so flustered that I couldn’t even get the words out. The corner of Tony’s lip curled in response and I felt a sizzling flush rise to the surface of my cheeks.

“Care to try that again, kid?”

“Tell me what you put in my drink Tony. Tell me!”

His eyes met mine in challenge, saying nothing through his smug grin.

“Why won’t you say it, huh? Just tell me what you put in my juice!”

His lip curled even higher, and I felt myself losing what little self-control I still possessed.

“Tell me Tony or I swear to GOD—”

He interrupted before I could finish. The contrast between my scratched, angry accusations and his smooth, self-confident tone was enough to make me bite my teeth hard enough to send a twang through the bottom half of my skull.

“You want to know what I put in your drink, Peter? Been obsessing over it in that head of yours, haven’t you?” He said, reaching up a finger to tap at my temple.

I made an animalistic sound in the back of my throat, unable to even form words.

Tony’s lips pulled back in a smile that looked more like a wolf opening its jaws to eat.

“Salt, Peter. Table salt. That’s what I put in your juice.”

His answer made me unspeakably furious in a way that was impossible to articulate. My face twisted into a grimace so severe that I felt my expression become violently distorted, features pulling against each other as muscles stretched taut beneath my skin.

Tony laughed at my response, knowing exactly why his answer was making me see red.

“What’s the matter, Peter? Not the answer you were hoping for?” He said suggestively.

The room went deathly still as the searing anger in my belly flash-dried into crystals of Siberian ice. There was a sense of time seeming to fracture, of seconds being pulled to their absolute limit.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Tony smirked at me in a way that was so smug and condescending and _knowing_.

Like I’d been impossibly easy to figure out.

The room seemed to spin around me, and my last shred of restraint disintegrated. I turned away from Tony, marched to the nearest shelf. Yanked off the first piece of half-finished circuitry I could reach. Smashed it onto the floor with a loud crunch. Reached up for the next piece, feeling my fingers close around metal. Felt something soft _thwap_ into the back of my head from where Tony had thrown it at me, draping over the front of my face.

Wrenched it off between clawed fingers, feeling warm fabric pressed inside my fist.

Jerked, stumbled, staggered backwards, my whole body trembling from the knowledge that I was holding Tony Stark’s grey boxer briefs.

And that meant—

I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t turn to look at him. It was as if he’d glued my eyes to the wall in front of me, fixed my head between a vice that made it impossible to twist it to the left or to the right.

My nostrils flared with each inhale. I felt like a caged animal.

Tony knew exactly what he’d done. The dry laugh he let out across the bedroom removed all trace of doubt in my head.

“I don’t know which is the more vibrant shade of red — the wallpaper or the back of your neck.”

I dropped the boxers like I’d been burned, kept my gaze fixed on the wall and moved for the door.

My fingers closed around the handle just as Tony’s arm slammed into the door above my head, forcing it shut. His body moved close enough that I could feel the heat radiating into my neck, my back, and down each leg through the thin material of my sweatpants. I had the impression of being loomed over, of being trapped beneath a mass far greater and stronger than my own, one which was as immovable to me as a boulder. The powerlessness, the helplessness in the face of all that overpowering strength tasted like bitter citrus on the back of my tongue.

I felt my chest palpitate in helpless fury.

Tony’s voice was low enough to ripple through my abdomen when he spoke into my left ear. “I’m gonna make you pay for that circuit you broke, Pete. And I know you don’t have any money.”

There was another moment of stunned silence as I felt the weight of his implications press into me the way a diver might sense the vastness of the ocean above, waiting to crush him.

“Get off of me, Tony.”

I felt his breath ghost over the nape of my neck as he chuckled again, and didn’t make a single move away from me.

“GET OFF OF ME!”

I felt violently sick as I reached my arms back to shove at his chest. I was still too timid to risk moving my eyes from the door, and when my hands sank into warm, hard stomach I hated how I had no way of knowing just how low down his chest they were, just how _close_ —

Tony’s hands snapped around my wrists and shoved them harshly into the door above my head. I tried to pull free but found myself entirely transfixed in his hold. Tony didn’t hesitate before bracketing me against the door with his body, and this time I could feel him pressing into me, could feel the length of his naked body pressing into my back. 

I was bucking like a wild animal in his grasp.

“Let me go!”

It felt like I had been caged, had been trapped. With every wriggle, I could feel new planes and facets of his body drag against my own.

There was something low and sinuous in Tony’s voice when he next spoke.

“Turn and look.”

My stomach pulled down to meet the glossy floorboards with the violent swoop of a pilot performing a barrel roll.

“What did you just say to me?”

“Turn and look at me Peter. Then you can go.”

The wooden floor was hard and slippery underfoot. There was moisture at the back of my neck, and some of it was matted into my hair. My chest was heaving as my heart thudded, and I could smell old sweat and something unfamiliar beneath it, something entirely foreign to my olfactory receptors.

The back of my heel slammed into the space between Tony’s legs.

“—mphgh—”

My wrists were released and my hands dropped to my sides, curling into fists.

There was no hesitation.

I spun to face Tony. Saw him backing towards the bed, clutching at himself with agony written over his features.

It didn’t matter that he was naked. Nothing seemed to matter any more, except—

I strode forward and slammed my fist into his head, knocking it sharply to the left. 

I raised a fist for the followup and felt his eyes sharpen on me.

Tony’s hands sprung up into a defensive position around his head, and the movement proved fatal.

I tried to resist the strangling compulsion to stare at what had just been revealed. Tried to wrench my eyes away.

And in my distracted stupor, I felt my footing give out beneath me as my socks slid across polished wood.

I crashed into the solid floorboards, and Tony was on top of me a second later.

I was winded, reeling from the hard smack of wood into my body. Tony had my arms pinned above my head in a disgustingly short amount of time.

It was especially humiliating that just one of his monstrous hands was ample to keep both of my wrists pinned to the floor.

“Wasn’t smart,” he huffed out above me between wheezing breaths. I felt a vicious gash of pleasure knife through my stomach from the knowledge that he was still suffering from the pain of what I’d done to him, could still feel it curling through the bottom half of his stomach.

I tried to yank my hands down for another go, but my struggles were futile against his iron grip.

“No idea what I’m capable of,” I growled at him, still riding the adrenaline high from standing up for myself, from actually doing something. In those delirious seconds it didn’t seem to matter how much stronger than me Tony was, how much bigger he was, how his body dwarfed mine or how the heavy weight of it crushed me against the floorboards.

The next handful of seconds were filled with heavy panting as Tony slowly regained his breath on top of me. I didn’t even mind that Tony was panting so hard that he was dribbling from his mouth, his saliva dripping down and pooling onto the collar of my tee, just beneath my collarbone. I took the stain as a mark of victory.

“You’re awfully chipper for a guy pinned to the floor,” he said, a lingering trace of the pain still evident in his tone. “Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.”

It took a few seconds for me to catch the implication, and then a ruddy heat flared across my cheeks. I writhed again in Tony’s grasp, desperate for any hint of freedom I could wrestle away from him. 

I jerked a knee up, trying to lodge it in Tony’s crotch but felt his free hand snap around my thigh and force it harshly back into the floor. I struggled with all my might against his grip, against the weight of him keeping me there, but was utterly powerless against the sheer mass that was pinning me down, keeping me squeezed beneath him.

The helpless despair was opening up in my stomach the longer I was kept like that, and I writhed as violently as I could manage, trying to buck him off of me before it was too late.

Tony’s hand squeezed warningly against my thigh, crushing it beneath his grip as he demanded my submission. I felt a piece of _something_ flare up in me at the touch, some dormant instinct that was struggling to awaken. It felt like the brush of something vast and terrifying against my mind, some alien instinct that threatened to flood my brain like a virus.

I needed to be free of him and I needed it _now_.

“LET GO OF ME!”

Tony’s mouth pulled into a smirk as his grip around my wrists and around my thigh tightened, showing me just how powerless I was beneath him, just how helpless.

I thrashed once, twice, three times and, in the final extremity, lifted my head from the floor and sunk my teeth into the meat of his shoulder.

Tony howled. The firm grip on my hands released as he arched his body away from me, taking my face with him as my teeth were still lodged firmly in his flesh.

I had only a short moment to revel in the freedom before one of Tony’s fists smacked into the side of my head, hitting me with enough force that it felt like I’d slammed my head into a goal post. The blow rattled through my skull and immediately caused my mouth to dislodge from Tony’s shoulder.

I fell back into the floor with a hard crack that made my vision blur.

I barely had a moment’s reprieve before Tony was on me again. He slammed his fist into my stomach as he looked down at me in a frenzy, his mouth pulled into a bitter snarl of contempt. I heard myself grunting as another blow smacked into my chest, and then I was frantically backpedaling away, trying to get some distance from the crazed male.

My back slammed into a wall and I pulled myself up it, rising to a standing position as fast as my legs permitted. I had only the time to grab a single item from Tony’s shelf before he was on me.

I clutched the bottle of cologne between violently trembling hands and spritzed it directly into Tony’s enraged eyes. 

The were no words to describe the howl he let out as he staggered away from me, his hands rubbing furiously at his clenched eyes.

I wasn’t going to get another opportunity like this. I took my chance and bolted.

The slap of my footsteps against the wooden floor must have alerted him to what I was doing, because I wasn’t halfway to the door before Tony’s hands encircled my leg and yanked back hard enough that it felt like something was about to pop out of its socket. I let out a sad little ‘eep!’ as I tumbled towards the floor, and the side of my face smacked into the wooden frame of Tony’s bed with a sound that rattled through my eardrums.

“—little shit!”

It was as if a record had skipped, and the room around me had completely transformed from one second to the next. Somehow I was now laying with my back on the floor, looking up into a pair of bloodshot eyes as Tony’s snarled down at me, looking like he wanted to kill me with his gaze.

What the hell? When had he managed to get on top of me again?

The front half of my face felt worryingly numb and there was something wet coating my mouth and chin.

I shrieked as one of Tony’s hands grabbed me by my hair and yanked my head up so hard that it felt like I had been scalped.

He raised my face until it was inches away from his own and stared at me, his eyes glinting dangerously with anger and something I couldn’t put words to.

“I could hurt you so fucking easily right now, Peter,” he spoke, his voice dangerously low. “But I won’t. You took your shot at me, you fucked it up. _You_ were the one who attacked me, who tried to hurt me, embarrass me, and _you_ were the one who ended up with egg all over your face.”

I tasted his hot breath as he continued speaking, his mouth inches away from me and his eyes drilling into me. I couldn’t do anything as he held me there, forcing me to listen to what he was saying, forcing me to keep meeting his gaze.

The next words came out of him in a low whisper.

“When you’re tossing and turning tonight, remembering what I did to you? Remember that you were the one who attacked me and you were the one who failed. You were the weak one. You embarrassed yourself, you fucked up, and you have only yourself to blame. I hope it gnaws away at you,” he finished, and then dropped me unceremoniously back onto the wooden floor.

Tony stood up, rolling his shoulders to release the tension in them after the altercation. He loomed over me, looking every inch the alpha male as I hiccoughed, weak and pathetic on the floor in front of him.

“Now get the fuck out of my room.”

I didn’t need to be told twice as I bolted.


	3. Insinuation

Tony’s room was a crimson smear as I tore for the exit.

My knees were quaking. My heart was pounding in my temples. There was a ripping pain in my chest, my lungs, my throat.

I yanked the door open and fell into the living room.

Pulled it shut behind me and staggered towards the couch.

I couldn’t get enough air, I couldn’t breathe. My throat was clogged. My hand hovered uselessly in front of it, grasping at nothing.

I lurched for the staircase, propelled forward on jerking, frantic limbs. I clawed at the railing as I pulled my body upwards, climbing the stairs like I had a devil on my heels. The breath was violently loud as it tore out of my throat, sounding like a wild animal somewhere was being skinned alive.

I hit the top landing and darted for the door to Howard’s bathroom, the one room in the apartment I would be safe. I reached for the handle and sweat-slick hands slid off of shiny brass, making my stomach swoop and a desperate hiss escape my mouth.

My grip found purchase on the second attempt and the metal handle scored the air as I threw myself into the room.

I slammed the door behind me and clasped the lock, flattening my back against the wood the second it was secure.

My chest was heaving so violently that it felt like a small fox was trying to burst its way out of my lungs. My vision danced with multicoloured spots and there was a worrying blurriness coming from my left eye.

I didn’t bother switching on the bathroom lights as I stumbled forward on legs that felt drunk.

I collapsed to the floor and slumped back against the porcelain tub, feeling a needling coldness pierce through the back of my T-shirt. There was something sharp and sterile in the air of the bathroom, something I could detect even through the rusty tang that was coating my tongue. The hard tiled floor was every bit as unforgiving as the rigid porcelain, and there was not an ounce of comfort to be found inside this room.

It was utterly impossible to sit still. My fingers danced along my thighs and my jaw was opening and closing with a quiet clicking noise. My knees were bouncing up and down like they were possessed of some preternatural life. The harder I tried to hold one body part still, the more frantically some other part of me seemed to kick into motion. I clasped my hands together by my stomach and felt my toes wriggle in my socks. I held my jaw shut and found my fingers drumming into the meat of my flank. I stilled my breathing and found my heels grinding into the floor tiles.

A hand jerked up to brush the sweat from my brow, dropping to my stomach positively swimming with moisture. I wiped it on the leg of my sweats, the grey material blotting dark with perspiration.

I didn’t want to think about what colour the sweats would turn if I wiped the bottom half of my face.

_Oh god. What had I done? How could I have been so stupid?_

I clutched my hands to my chest, pressing them against the frenetic pounding of my heart. Almost like I could wrap my fingers around the muscle and squeeze it until I’d choked every ounce of this deranged energy from it.

I had tried to punch Tony Stark. I had attacked him. Not even a day after moving in with him.

The tiles beneath me seemed to tilt, or maybe gravity was shifting into a new axis. My fingers scraped against the floor, in desperate search of an anchor.

Aunt May was going to flip when she found out. She would be beyond devastated. This would _crush_ her.

A panicked whimper fell out of my throat, a noise that sounded more canine than human.

How could I have done that to her? After everything else she had already been through, because of me.

A putrid sickness seemed to curl over my tongue, overwhelming my mouth with a vinegary acidity. I needed a distraction, needed something to cut through the self-loathing that was rising through my stomach like a flood.

My gaze snapped from the tiles, to the sink, to the walls, to the ceiling.

It was all so aggressively sanitised. I was awash in a sea of white. Adrift.

The room was nothing like the bathroom I’d shared with May back at our old place, the ruggedly cosy little box adjoining my bedroom. Here it was much too big around me. Even sprawled out on the floor, I took up an embarrassingly small portion of the available space.

I tried to lick the dryness from my lips, but felt a worried tug deep inside my abdomen when I tasted sharp copper.

I sank against the tub as an oppressive numbness seemed to steal over me, an absence of sensation that started at my temples and sluiced down over the rest of me. My breathing tapered off and my hands stilled, slotting against my hips and stiffening, as if petrified. Even my legs eventually fell quiet, pressing against the floor like a heavy weight was trying to pull them through it.

It was a disquieting numbness, one that had my stomach doing a panicked flutter. It didn’t feel like relaxing so much as my body becoming inert, like a speeding vehicle sliding to a sudden halt, all its momentum expended.

My eyes rose up to stare glassily at the locked door, and there was a sensation of something vast being kept at bay, something that would engulf me the second I stepped out of the bathroom.

I focused on sucking in enough air, hoping it would keep me grounded, keep me sane. I struggled to pull it deep enough, feeling the breath linger at the crown of my ribcage, instead of where it was needed in the sunken ridge of my diaphragm.

There was only a faint impression of pain from all the bruises. A vague approximation of how I’d been hurt, yet to be fully realised. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the adrenaline subsided and I was in agony.

The skin of my face was cool and clammy, but my mouth was burning. The temperature of the room seemed to vacillate around me, dropping from a smothering heat to a prickling iciness in the span of seconds. There was something hot buried deep inside my skull, like a flush that was struggling to erupt across the numb slop of my face.

I reached up a hand to press into my left cheek, the one that had smacked into Tony’s bed. The flesh was an odd mixture of rigid and spongy, like a hard outer shell was curled around a softer, fleshy interior. It was somewhat reminiscent of pressing your fingers into an overripe apple, and I had the sense that if you pierced my cheek with a knife, all my humours would come spurting out of me.

My gaze crawled up the wall again, hunting for another distraction. It came to rest on the silver mirror hung over the sink, reflecting a dimly lit patch of ceiling. My abdominal muscles shrank into my stomach when I thought about looking at myself in the mirror, and my hand fell from my cheek, dropping like a stone. 

I shivered violently, feeling like I was still caught between the alternating sensations of fire and ice. There was an uncomfortable dryness in my mouth and a persistent thirst creeping up the back of my throat.

My forehead prickled with a fresh film of sweat. I found my fingers rising up to prod at my face again, seemingly of their own volition. It was unsettling how numb everything still was, how harshly I could dig my fingers into the meat of my left cheek before I started to feel any pain. 

My right cheek was warm and tingly, still buzzing from Tony’s punch. Whereas the left cheek was giving me a dull, throbbing ache, the right cheek was easier to smart when I pushed my fingers into it. I only had to press down gently before my jaw twitched, and when I really shoved my fingers into the skin I could feel a persistent static prickling against my nerve endings.

The breath seeped out of me like liquid ooze. There was no use delaying any longer, I needed to assess the damage.

I jerkily pulled myself to my feet and stepped over to the mirror, extending a hand to hover over the light switch. I studied the dark blur I could see reflected in the silver. There was just a glimpse of pale skin, a flash of eyes.

I inhaled.

Flicked the light switch on.

It— it—

I swallowed dryly.

It wasn’t _quite_ as bad as I had feared. There was blood to wash off around my mouth and under my nose, but the bruising on my cheeks didn’t look too unsightly. The contrast may have been pretty stark against the pallid, grayish hue of the rest of my skin, but it wasn’t like I looked _mangled_. The main impression was that the bruised skin had a greasy, oily sheen to it, like someone had left me on the sideboard too close to a frying pan or had splattered my cheeks with purple grime and sallow yellow.

I watched my lips pull into a self-pitying frown and wrenched my gaze away, looking down as my fingers twisted the metal tap on. I ran my hand beneath it, feeling another panicked flutter at the realisation I was utterly unable to detect whether the water was hot or cold.

I brought my hand up to wipe some of the dried blood from my face. I kept the motions as gentle as I could manage, watching in something of a trance as I tracked swathes of pink watercolour through the dried and crusted blood.

The skin revealed beneath was mottled blacks and deep purples, more bruising unveiled beneath the patina of dried blood. It took several minutes’ work until the blood was scoured from my mouth and chin, and then motion gave way to a vacant stare at my reflection.

My pupils had shrunk to pinholes and there was a worrying amount of white visible around my irises. My lips were so cracked and dry it made my mouth look like a violent tear rupturing the bottom half of my face. 

My fingers were pushing into the bruises again, trying to elicit more of that reassuring twang of agony. Digging my fingers into the skin required the application of a worrisome amount of force before I was able to provoke a response, but I had more luck twisting and squeezing, which took much less effort to evoke that needling pain. Anything was better than the numbness, the feeling like I was nothing— 

I backed away from the mirror, flooded by a sudden disorientation. The room spun around me, colours bleeding together and lights distorting into a kaleidoscope.

It felt like there was something black and occlusive behind my face, something that was keeping it separated from the rest of me. Like there was some kind of blockage, a haze that I was unable to pierce.

I stumbled for the toilet and retched into it, splattering the porcelain with flecks of gargoyle-hued vomit. The spinning only seemed to get worse, and my knees smashed into cold, unforgiving tiles. 

My whole face was burning now, like I was suffering from the worst, most humiliating flush of my life. My breathing was growing louder and the searing white of the bathroom halogens was piercing through me, like it was trying to burrow its way into the back of my skull.

I clenched my eyes shut and fell backwards onto the tiles, reaching my hands up to press into my eyelids. My palms slid over damp skin, my face as wet and slippery as a windshield in a storm.

_What was happening to me?_

A quiet moan rose up my throat, followed by a frantic bark of laughter that seemed to disintegrate before it was fully out of my mouth. There were pins and needles spreading down the back of each thigh, and my fingers danced with jittering excitability.

 _You_ _’re fine, Peter. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. Everything—_

An intense, shuddery spasm wracked through my body, making every muscle twitch with tremulous energy. The shivering grew uncontrollable, my teeth chattering together as my arms clenched around my torso. A frightened wail climbed the length of my throat as a shrieking static funnelled into my eardrums like liquid.

My fingers twisted into a frantic knot against my stomach and the world melted into a watery gruel.

🐝 🐝 🐝

I blearily opened my eyes to the glare of bright white tiles reflecting up at me.

_What the—?_

I slowly became conscious of the fact that I was sprawled out across the bathroom floor. What had happened? Had I fainted?

“Agh!” I grunted, feeling my entire face _throb_ with agony. “F—”

My mouth hung open as a grinding pain crunched through my entire head.

Now it hurt. Now it really goddamn hurt.

I clawed my way into a sitting position, feeling a molten ache spear through my body like it wanted to split me in two.

“Mmph—” I moaned, my voice high pitched and wavering.

My forehead creased and I hissed as the movement sent a new pulse of agony lancing through my features. Everything hurt, everything was _on fire_.

I used the tub as leverage to lurch into a standing position. The room swam around me but I managed to stay upright, saved by the white-knuckled grip I held on the porcelain. I steeled myself and glanced over to the mirror, wondering if—

 _Shit_.

My entire body locked tight as I saw the state of my face, and then I snapped into frantic motion.

I needed to get ice on my face and I needed it _now_.

I jerked over to the bathroom door and unclasped the lock, feeling every excruciating inch of the swollen skin I had just seen reflected in the mirror. There was no time for second guessing, no time to worry about where Tony was or what he was doing — if I didn’t ice my face now I would wake up tomorrow looking like the elephant man. 

I pulled myself down the staircase and into the kitchen, leaving a trail of pained whimpers in my wake. I searched the freezer and grabbed the biggest bag of frozen peas I could find, big enough to envelop the entire left side of my face. It stung like an absolute motherfucker as the ice touched the bruised and swollen flesh, but I quickly felt the relief of numbness taking away some of that fiery ache from the bruises.

I collapsed into one of the dining chairs, letting out another agonised whimper. Oh god, what had Tony done to me, what had he done?

My gut tightened when the older boy’s face flashed across my mind, a panicked swell bursting through my chest. I could remember the cruel sneer painting his features as he’d pulled me up by my hair, the contemptuous tone he’d spat at me. A blur of images from the fight played through my brain, but they were jumbled and incoherent, distorted by the dizzying hysteria of my panic. The pounding thrum of my face hitting his bed, the vague salinity of his chest as I’d sunk my teeth into it, the unbearable weight of his body crushing me against the floorboards. 

My hand started to shake around the frozen peas, and I had to press the bag even harder into my face to stop the trembling.

 _Get a grip, Peter. You_ _’re fine. You’re safe_ —

The door handle behind me shifted and the breath clogged in my throat. Every muscle in my body tightened as Tony’s padded footsteps entered the kitchen, and I had to clamp my teeth around the frightened whimper that threatened to escape.

I felt a desperate vulnerability sat here with my back to him, an unbearable degree of weakness.

_Shit. Holy Goddamn fuck._

My stomach bloated with fear and the sensation of a thousand ants burst across my skin.

I concentrated on my breathing and tried not to let another panic attack start. I didn’t want to even _look_ at Tony, but the thought of showing him my back, the defencelessness of it, forced my hand.

I reluctantly twisted in my chair to face him.

Tony was stood against the counter wearing an Iron Maiden shirt and his grey boxer briefs, staring at my hunched form in the dining chair. One of his hips was cocked, giving the appearance of nonchalance. His shoulders were relaxed and low, a far cry from the confrontational stance he’d adopted earlier. He was even drumming his fingertips across the counter-top, a movement that seemed intentionally blasé.

Two things stood out to me from the way Tony was standing. Two details that had failed to slip beneath my notice. One: other than the fingertips drumming against the counter, the rest of Tony’s body was unnaturally still, as immobile as a glacier. And two: it was almost impossible to read any expression on his face.

Dread prickled down the back of my neck and the room seemed to chill a few degrees colder. My toes clenched in my socks as I struggled not to let the fear erupt across my face.

The drumming of Tony’s fingertips halted.

“What, were you feeling peckish?”

_What?_

My brow knit in confusion as my brain struggled to parse the unexpected question. Unease gurgled in my stomach until Tony nodded at the bag of frozen peas being pressed into the side of my face, and then comprehension dawned with a sickening lurch.

 _Feeling peckish?_ Was he actually trying to make a joke out of this?

“That’s not very funny, Tony.” I didn’t like the way my voice wavered around his name, or how the mere presence of the older boy was enough to make my stomach roll with nervous dread.

Tony’s stare seemed to grow more intense after my comment, and the hand that had been drumming against the counter-top moved to grip the edge of it instead.

“Not sure I would’ve taken you for a peas man. I thought frozen carrots would’ve been more up your alley. Parsnips?” His light tone was at odds with the unsettling rigidity of his body, the unnatural stillness that had settled over him like a shroud.

I broke eye contact, dropping my gaze to stare at the wooden floor somewhere near his feet. Did he actually think he was being funny? Making a joke out of the fact that I was here icing my bruises in the kitchen, because of what he’d done to me?

I tried to stave off the self-pity that was welling up in my stomach.

“Why would frozen carrots—?” I aborted the question mid-way through and gave a soft noise of disbelief. My shoulders slumped and the breath wheezed out of me. Whatever game he was playing, I didn’t have the energy for it.

“What do you want, Tony?”

It was still just as impossible to detect any emotion on the older boy’s face. There was barely a flicker of a micro-expression in response to the question.

Tony raised a hand to scratch his fingers across his chin. “You know if you keep hunching like that it’ll ruin your posture.”

I winced as a sudden hurt bloomed near my stomach, a pain that was somehow sharper than the ache of my bruises. For a moment, I struggled to understand why his comments were having such a negative effect on me. Then I realised it was because he was making idle chit chat while I was in such obvious pain, acting like the bruises and injuries weren’t even there. Like they didn’t matter at all, like they weren't even worthy of comment.

My fingers clenched around the bag of frozen peas.

“ _Ruin my posture_? So now you care about my wellbeing?” I couldn’t stop the hurt from leaking into my voice, the accusation.

There was a prolonged silence as Tony just stared at me, and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining the way his grip on the counter-top seemed to have tightened. It was unnerving how I had no way of knowing what he was thinking, no clue as to what he might do next.

His next comment was muttered so quietly that I wasn’t sure it had been intended for my ears, or whether Tony was just voicing his thoughts to himself.

“Typical.”

It felt like someone had thrown a bucket of icy water in my face.

What was typical? Was I typical? Me? My behaviour?

What was he insinuating?

I tried to swallow past the unpleasant taste that had risen to the back of my tongue.

“What was that?” I asked, hoping I had misheard.

Tony just kept staring at me, his brow creasing mildly in annoyance.

“Nothing.”

There was a growing feeling of nausea in my stomach, like I had swallowed something repugnant.

“What’s typical, Tony? What is?”

Tony held my gaze a few more seconds before rolling his eyes and swivelling to stare out the window in a disinterested manner.

“Again with the histrionics.”

The muttered comment had been louder this time, and there was no doubt that I had been intended to hear it. I felt the air squeeze out of my chest like an enormous clamp had been soldered to my lungs.

“Histrionics?”

The word came out of me sounding unbearably wet, like I was seconds away from tears. I hated this feeling of being belittled, of being treated like a hysterical child.

Tony’s eyes settled back on my face and the corners of his mouth curled in disdain.

“Oh please, you don’t fool me for a second.”

I felt his words drag against me like a knife might snag on a particularly sinewy piece of meat. I turned my body away from him, hoping to hide more of my face behind the bag of frozen peas. 

There was an aborted chuckle from the other side of the kitchen, as if in disbelief. “Really, Peter? _Really?_ _”_

I felt a burning itchiness in my eyes and hunched my body over even further.

“Christ,” Tony said to himself, the word sounding utterly resigned. I could almost hear the intention behind it: _See what I have to deal with? See?_

I couldn’t help the sniffle that escaped after that comment.

“Give it up, Peter. You’ve barely got a scratch on you.”

I felt my throat wobble as my body gave a humiliating shudder. Why couldn’t he leave me alone? Why couldn’t he just leave?

There was a deliberate sigh from the other side of the room, and Tony stretched the sound out long past what was necessary to make his point.

I didn’t dare turn and look at him. I didn’t want him to see how pathetic I was, how his comments already had me on the verge of tears.

“Fine, whatever. Let me take a look at it.”

I stayed stock still, frozen to the spot. My body had completely locked up and I found myself unable to move.

“Don’t be an idiot Peter, let me see.”

I gave a violent tremble that set the frozen peas crunching together.

“For fucks sake Peter move the damn ice pack!”

Tony crossed the kitchen in two strides and yanked my hand away from my face, the force of his grip making me emit a panicked whimper. I looked up at him like a deer caught in headlights, my body thrumming with a sudden adrenaline.

Something changed in his face as he looked at me, a widening of his eyes and an involuntary hiss of air as he sucked it between his teeth.

Tony let go of my wrist like he had been burned. He turned away to pace across the kitchen, and I lifted the frozen peas back to my face so I could hide behind the bag.

For long seconds, there was only the sound of Tony’s frantic pacing up and down the hardwood floorboards.

“Christ you bruise easily don’t you.” His voice had turned nasty, like he was blaming _me_ for the bruises. As if I had any control over how badly they showed up on my face.

I made a dry sound in my throat, a feeble noise that was barely perceptible.

His voice had turned even nastier with the second comment, but it couldn’t disguise the shakiness underlying his words. “Bruise like a goddamn peach! Such a frail thing, aren’t you.”

I felt some of that gaping hollowness inside my chest again, that awful feeling from before.

“Tony—”

“You’re so damn scrawny, Pete. It’s fucking pathetic.”

I was thankful he wasn’t looking in my direction as he said it, or he would’ve seen the way I flinched and my eyes flooded with moisture.

“I’m not pathetic,” I said in a strangled tone. I hated to admit how much his words were getting to me, how I could feel every sentence he uttered in the pit of my stomach where it festered.

“Just look at you, Peter. So damn thin, I know you and your aunt are poor but you’re practically malnourished.”

I hung my head in shame and had to bite down on my bottom lip.

“Aunt May and I aren’t poor,” I whispered. “And I’m not _malnourished_. I’m a normal weight.”

It seemed like that was what Tony was looking for, because he latched onto it like a shark sensing the first drop of blood.

“You kidding me? You’re so fucking thin Peter. You’re just a sad little flower.”

I swallowed hard and gave a slow, disbelieving head shake.

“I’m not a s-sad—” It was too ridiculous to even say aloud. It sounded like the punchline to a bad joke, but I had never felt further from the urge to laugh.

“You’re just so goddamn _delicate_ , aren’t you?”

The way he spat the word ‘delicate’ like it was a cuss set off a nervous jolt in my stomach, a spasm of muscle that felt like that moment of free-fall before my face had smacked into his bed.

“No muscle on you anywhere, is there Peter? Just those thin wrists and that small waist.”

I didn’t have anything I could say to that. I couldn’t even fake a comment, pretend that his words weren’t making me feel so horribly ashamed of myself, of my body.

I let out a quiet whimper and Tony’s pacing came to an abrupt halt. With a sense of awful inevitability, I drew my eyes from the floor to meet his.

His expression was almost as neutral as it had been when he’d entered the kitchen, but there was now something casting his features in a new light. Something that looked a little desperate, like he had started to fray around the edges. Was it the way he was opening his eyes just a little too wide? Or the sharpness I could detect to his jawline, almost like he was grinding his teeth together?

I watched, a helpless bystander, as Tony’s mouth pulled into a cruel sneer.

“Then again, I doubt anyone was surprised how you turned out. You know,” he paused, eyes gleaming with something that made my stomach curl in on itself, “All things considered.”

The second the words were out of his mouth, my free hand clenched around the back of my chair in a sharp, stiff movement. It was suddenly impossible to hold my own arms up, as if someone had attached a tremendous weight to both of my wrists.

“ _All things considered?_ ” I asked over the pounding of blood in my ears, my voice sounding like it had come from somebody else’s mouth.

“No one was surprised how you turned out, Peter.” He enunciated the words at me like he was talking to a dumb animal, and I could see his hands forming into fists at his sides. “Not when you grew up without any male role models.”

My eyelids snapped shut, but it was too late to block out his words, much too late to stop that awful, penetrating hurt spearing through my chest. How the fuck did he know? Who had told him about dad, about Uncle Ben—?

I lurched out of my seat, feeling my entire body convulse with barely restrained emotion.

“That is s-so f-fucked up,” I said in a wavering voice, doing everything I could to keep the tears at bay. Tony smirked at me, but even the vicious curve of his mouth couldn’t disguise the frantic look in his eyes, like even he had been shocked by the decision to throw my dead father and uncle in my face.

The trembling in my chest grew violent enough to make me stagger, and an inhuman howl tore up the back of my throat.

“Is this what you wanted, Tony?” I asked as the tears began to cascade down my cheeks. “Wanted to push me even further into the dirt?”

There were lines of tension running through Tony’s body now, and he was gripping the counter behind him with enough strength to pulverise a lesser material. He opened his mouth, but for once his words seemed to fail him.

I took a step towards him and was surprised when he twitched backwards, inching towards the counter.

“You just had to fuck with me even more, didn’t you? Even after doing this.”

I let the bag of frozen peas drop away from my face, baring every inch of the bruised and swollen skin at him.

Tony flinched — actually _flinched_ — and pivoted his body to focus on the kitchen wall to my left, clenching his jaw hard enough that I could hear his teeth crunch together.

I felt something hot bubble into my stomach, something that seared my insides with fire and acid.

 _He couldn_ _’t even bear to look at me._

I felt a twisted surge of confidence at the realisation, even as the tears continued to drip down my chin.

“Look at me Tony. Look at what you’ve done to my face!”

His shoulders bulged with tension, but his gaze stayed firmly on the kitchen wall. His fingers clawed into fists, the muscles spasming as he clenched and unclenched them.

“I don’t need to look, Peter. I’ve already seen how ugly you are.”

Tony folded his arms to grip his biceps, but he hadn’t been fast enough to disguise the trembling in his fingers. Not that I’d needed to see it. Not that I hadn’t already figured out exactly what was happening.

I stared at him for long, hard seconds in the silent kitchen. His breathing was audibly ragged and his chest was rising and falling in stuttered motions. His body was so stiff that it looked like he hadn’t moved in months instead of minutes. His eyes were glaring at the kitchen wall behind me like he wanted to burn a hole through it using only his gaze.

That fiery bubbling in my stomach grew in intensity, sloshing around and sending a burning heat rippling through my abdomen.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening when I really thought about it. The forced casualness when he’d entered the kitchen. The way he’d been so incensed by every groan of pain. His inability to look at the bruised skin covering my jaw and cheeks. 

It wasn’t hard to guess what Tony was feeling about our fight, now that his adrenaline had burned out. I knew exactly why he couldn’t bear to look at me, exactly which emotion had triggered his Rottweiler facade this time.

It wasn't hard to recognise the look in his eyes when it was something I saw every day when I looked at myself in the mirror, felt every morning when I woke up and I _remembered_.

The acid in my stomach boiled, effervesced, vaporised into something blistering and savage, something I could feel seeping up my throat in an acrid wave. 

“Yeah, you don’t need to look?” I could hear the fire creeping into my voice, the throaty heat underlying each of my words. “You won’t need to see this then, either.”

I couldn’t explain what made me do it, what momentary insanity had gripped me within its thrall. But it felt like touching a livewire — no, it felt like pressing my mouth to the wire and clamping it between my teeth. 

With deliberate movements, I lifted my hand to my face and dug my fingers into the bruising on my left cheek.

I hissed in agony, feeling the instant stab of pain needle through my synapses. Tony’s eyes snapped over to me and then returned to the wall in a spasm, his shoulders hunching with newfound tension as he fought to stop his body reacting.

I eased off, feeling a momentary disappointment at the lack of response.

That wasn’t enough for him, then?

_Fine._

I dug my fingers as deep as they could go into the meat of my left cheek and dragged them down to my chin, letting out a prolonged, throaty groan as the pain blossomed across the left hemisphere of my skull. The groan turned into a desperate whimper as my finger snagged on a particularly excruciating spot, painful enough to make my eyes roll into the back of my head and multicoloured flecks scatter across my vision.

“Peter if you don’t stop touching your fucking face!” Tony growled the threat at me like a wild animal, finally swivelling his gaze from the kitchen wall to stare at me as his eyes turned murderous.

I swallowed dryly, feeling something stony in my stomach pull downward in response to Tony’s tone of voice. Instead of making me back down, I felt a nasty sort of adrenaline being pumped into my veins, filling me with a dangerously intoxicating sort of recklessness.

I focused both my eyes directly on his.

“Why do you care?”

Every muscle in Tony’s body tightened as I got the question out. His expression grew aggressively flat, as if a mask had slid over his face the way a lid might slide shut over a coffin. But there was no disguising the straining tension in his biceps, the awful stiffness of his spine.

“I don’t care.”

His tone of voice matched the aggressive neutrality of his expression, as if the two were competing to see which of them could appear the most disinterested. But at this point it was obvious that it was just an act, like I was coming to realise so much of Tony’s behaviour was.

“Oh?” I felt fuzzy and lightheaded, like my brain was swimming in delirium. There was something uncontrollable about the things I was saying to him, something unhinged about the way I was acting. Words flowed out of my mouth before I had even consciously processed them. Was this what a concussion was? Was that what was happening to me?

I squared my shoulders and continued staring at the strained neutrality of his face. “You don’t care?”

Something tensed in his upper body as I raised my hand back towards my face, and his expression became absolutely incensed, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. I felt that sensation curl through my stomach, that sick, reckless abandon. “Then you won’t mind—”

My hand hovered there a moment, and his eyes narrowed into furious slits as he glared at me. I could hear his breathing hissing out between clenched teeth, like steam escaping from an over-pressurised factory valve. I counted out the seconds, watching Tony grow more and more tense as I languorously drew out the moment. One, two, three—

I slowly began pressing the fingers into my face, right where I knew my bruising was the worst. My eyes clenched shut and my teeth smacked together as a groan of pain escaped my throat. I prodded a little more, making the muscles in my cheek twitch and clench with every bolt of pain that needled through me.

My eyes slid open and I looked over to see Tony standing ramrod straight, every single muscle in his body tensed so hard it looked like something was about to pop. The veins were stretching out of his biceps like over-tuned guitar strings that were ready to snap, and I could hear his molars grinding together loud enough to make his mouth sound like a macerator. 

Tony’s eyes were the worst, though — the expression in them was outraged beyond belief.

I felt something triumphant fluttering near my diaphragm, like I’d finally managed to win something.

I shoved my fingers into my cheek with enough viciousness to make my whole face curl up, and Tony flickered. At least, that was what it looked like — one moment he was stood on the other side of the kitchen, and the next he was close enough to smell his sweat as he yanked my hand away from my face with such force that it felt like my shoulder was about to pop out of its socket. My wrist smacked against the dining table behind me and Tony kept it pinned there, forcing the appendage against the polished wood with enough pressure to leave bruises on my skin.

I stared into his eyes, the whites showing around his irises as every muscle in his face spasmed with anger. Tony was beyond furious with me. He was insensate. His whole chest was expanding and contracting with violent breaths, like even now he was struggling not to punch me. Like it was taking a monumental effort not to deck me.

I knew why he was so furious. I’d done something worse to him than insulting his pride, something that affected him far more deeply.

I’d gotten him to show weakness. And there was nothing Tony loathed more.

“You screwy little dumpster fuck!” The words were snarled at me at a furious clip. “You, you— donkey-brained psycho masochist!”

I tugged my wrist in his grip and felt something violent pulse through my abdomen when his fingers tightened even harder around me.

“Yeah?” I almost didn’t recognise my voice as it came out of me. It was breathy in a way that sounded like I was fifty minutes into a deep tissue massage, like my voice was vibrating at the same frequency as every other molecule of my body. I still felt drunk, like something was smothering and blurring all of my instincts, making it so every thought came languidly sliding out of me, without any filters to stop it all emerging.

The sound of my voice seemed to do something to Tony, and he barked out a laugh that sounded jilted and crazy. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

“You tell me.” It was another challenge, another threat. Tony was silent as he held eye contact, silent except for the ragged breathing tearing out of his throat.

I felt my Adam’s apple bob as I swallowed again. There must have been something sick in my head, because I felt the urge to rile him up even more, provoke him even further.

It spilled out of me before I could stop it.

“I’m gonna keep touching my face.”

The growled riposte was instantaneous.

“You think I’d let you?”

He’d forced the sentence out through his teeth, and I could see the tendons in his neck straining. Something seemed to liquefy in my stomach, like my intestines had been sublimated to plasma.

“Yeah? You gonna stop me?” I didn’t know why it sounded like I was so out of breath, when I’d barely moved more than a foot since entering the kitchen.

He nodded. Up. Down. Two quick motions, short and abrupt.

I drew in a few more inhales. “How?”

Tony started talking before the word was even out of my mouth.

“24-hour surveillance. Put you on a leash. Nail it to my bedroom floor.”

There was a pause as we both seemed to be imagining the prospect, and I felt my face pull into a scandalised frown.

“Wha— I don’t—” I panted, struggling for breath. “How would that even work? You couldn’t watch me every minute of the day!”

The corner of his lip curled. “You don’t have the faintest idea of what I could or couldn’t do to you.”

I could feel the truth of Tony’s words, and that knowledge was enough to make my heart beat inside my throat.

I scrambled for anything I could say to halt the vivid reel of images playing through my brain. “That wouldn’t— how would I use the bathroom if I’m nailed to the floor?”

Tony’s eyes were glued to mine as his mouth spat the reply. “You’d get a bowl.”

Something twisted in my face in outrage. “I wouldn’t let you watch—”

“You wouldn’t have a choice.”

My face convulsed in disgust as my stomach somersaulted, a sensation like I’d crested the first hill on a rollercoaster. God help me, I whimpered. There was something incendiary crawling across my skin, something that had been born from the fiery scrape of Tony’s fingers around my wrist and had travelled up my arm to engulf the rest of my body.

My mind was spinning, whirling through a thousand images a second. I could feel sweat collecting at the small of my back, warm and syrupy, like I was leaning against a furnace instead of a dining table. The things Tony kept threatening me with were almost unimaginable, crawling under my skin like the most violent kind of phobia.

I needed answers, needed to know what I had done, why he wouldn’t _stop_ — 

“Why do you hate me, Tony?”

My voice sounded frighteningly small, but I needed the truth, needed some kind of resolution to this messed up series of events. Because if the unanswered questions kept churning through my brain all evening, twisting and corrupting my thoughts with the promise of a hundred unsavoury possibilities, I’d go insane.

Tony looked at me like he had been forced to swallow something deeply unpleasant. From the previous moment to the next, his demeanor had undergone a violent transformation. “Excuse me?”

“What did I do? What could I have possibly done to you to deserve this?”

My stomach had seized up and my heart was punching against my ribcage with the violent staccato of a fist. I needed to know what motivated his cruelty, needed an answer for why he always had to treat me like I was the worst sort of person, like I was nothing. I couldn’t explain the urge in any manner consistent with rational logic, it just felt like an overwhelming need to _know_ that was encompassing all of my conscious thought.

For the first time that evening, I could see a hesitancy written across Tony’s features that I was entirely unused to seeing on the older boy’s face. The seconds ticked past as the unanswered question played across his gaze, his teeth chewing on his lip as he looked to the outside world like he was entirely stumped for words.

“It bothers you that much, huh? That you think— that I— hate—?” His voice was careful, like he was fully aware that he was tugging on a thread that could unravel the entire sweater.

“Just tell me why. Please.” I was desperate for it, I needed to know. 

An expression that only vaguely resembled a smile stretched across his features, but it couldn’t disguise the uncertainty in his eyes.

“Say it, Tony. Say it.” The burning heat in my stomach was propelling me forward, demanding an answer. “Say it you coward.” I wasn’t going to back down, not this time.

Tony’s eyes roved over my face with the same questioning stare. His gaze crawled up the bruises on my jaw and cheek, swept past the tightly pursed lips and fluttered over my Adam’s apple. Each part of my flesh felt pierced by the gaze, studied and scrutinised to a degree that left the skin feeling burnt, cooked under the heat of his stare.

Tony’s eyes returned to mine. The moment seemed to stretch on endlessly, far past the limit of what physics would permit that meagre handful of seconds to encompass.

He gave a soft shake of his head.

The cascade of disappointment in my belly was immediate and acute. “Why won’t you say it? When it comes down to it, you’ve got no bite.” His face was close enough to mine that I could have whispered the accusation.

Tony considered it for a moment, and his voice lowered to a murmur. “Maybe you’re right.”

He held my gaze until the tension seemed to break, and then we both slumped as the intensity of the last few minutes sizzled out. Tony released my arm from where it was still pinned against the dining table and retreated to a comfortable distance of a few feet. I felt a prickle of something — relief? Disappointment? — that I covered up by rubbing at the newly formed bruises around my wrist, trying to bring back some circulation to the tingling limb.

There was a flush of embarrassment as the adrenaline subsided, followed closely by a swell of uncertainty. But before the moment could become awkward, one of Tony’s hands landed on my shoulder and ushered me back into the chair I had vacated a few minutes earlier.

“What are you—”

“Sit down, Scrappy-Doo,” he urged, his mouth pulling into a soft smile at the nickname. I allowed myself to be guided into a sitting position and stared up at him, feeling once again towered over by the Stark boy.

“Come on, let’s get you fixed up.”

Tony’s fingers gripped my chin as he scrutinised me, pulling my face this way and that as he surveyed the bruises and the damage. He studied each mark on my face, brow furrowed, and I found myself transfixed by the way Tony’s bottom lip was caught between his teeth, the pillowy flesh turning a vibrant scarlet.

The potency of his stare grew too much and I ducked my eyes to the Iron Maiden T-Shirt stretched tight across his stomach. The contours and ridges I could see cutting into the thin fabric reminded me of the scene earlier in his bedroom, when I had interrupted him stretched out in just his underwear—

My eyes lowered past the hem of the tee and I jolted in the chair at the reminder that Tony was still in his boxers. The older boy gripped my chin tighter, forcing me to sit still, and an uncomfortable ruddiness flared across my cheeks from the knowledge that I was eye-level with, um. It couldn’t have been more than a couple hand-spans away.

I guiltily pulled my gaze back to Tony’s face, feeling like I had violated some sort of implicit trust. I was immeasurably thankful that Tony seemed oblivious to the direction my thoughts had turned.

Now that he was so intently focused on my bruises, I was free to openly stare at his features with a freedom that I hadn’t allowed myself during our heated confrontation. There was something painful, something that felt like a squeeze of sharp injustice from the reminder of just how attractive the older boy was, just how unfair it was that someone so cruel could look like _that_. I tried not to focus on the thought, keenly aware of the abyss of insecurity and self-loathing that lay at the bottom of that particular well.

Tony continued with his careful ministrations, gently tugging my head this way and that as his eyes scoured the length of my face. This feeling of being scrutinised was making my palms slick with perspiration and my stomach clench with uncertainty. I wasn’t used to having anyone pay such close attention to me, and it was not a sensation I enjoyed in the slightest. It left me feeling open and exposed, raw in a way which had my instincts screaming at me.

“Damn, I really did a number on you.” Tony’s voice had turned wistful, and something in his intonation made it sound like he was speaking to himself rather than to me.

My shoulders curled inward as I fought an unexpected surge of embarrassment about the bruises. It had been easy to blame Tony for everything before — had even felt like righteous fury — but now that I was staring into his solemn expression, it was harder to maintain that same sense of injustice, that same fire. I could remember all too clearly the moment everything had switched, when I had lost my temper and started destroying his possessions. And later, when I had escalated, when I had lost my cool again and attacked him.

I couldn’t help but wonder where we’d have ended up, if I’d just had a better handle on my emotions. 

I prodded more at that queasy feeling of shame and felt it unravel itself, spreading across my chest in a tight ache. It wasn’t just the part I had played in escalating the conflict that was making me feel so ashamed, in taking a verbal spat and turning it into a physical fight. It was how ill-equipped I’d been to handle it when it had happened, how I’d kept pushing and pushing until Tony had no choice but to wreck me in retaliation. Hadn’t the bullying by Flash taught me anything? I was far too puny to risk getting into physical brawls, much too pathetic to even think about punching a guy like Tony Stark.

And look at where I’d ended up. It had more than a tinge of the inevitable to it, viewed through the sobering lens of hindsight. If I was really honest with myself, I could admit that we’d only ended up in this position because of me. Because I’d been so emotional, so pathetic.

The deep ache in my stomach swelled upwards into my throat, and I lowered my eyes in shame. “I mean— only a couple of the bruises were actually from you. Most of them came from the bed, right? It was just an accident, I guess.” My voice could barely be heard over the hum of the refrigerator.

Tony’s grip on my chin tightened, and one of his fingers unwittingly dug into a sore spot.

“Ach, Tony that hurts—”

I glanced up at him and spluttered, choking on an inhale. Tony’s expression had turned murderous and he looked seconds away from exploding.

“Are you out of your _fucking mind_?” The question was appallingly loud, cutting through the tranquillity of the kitchen with the violence of a nail gun. I startled, trying to pull my face out of his hands, but his fingers were gripping my jaw with a terrifying strength.

I felt queasy with the need to explain myself. “I’m j-just saying, the worst bruises came from when I tripped into your bed, is all,” I stuttered in a small voice.

There was a protracted silence that was punctured only by Tony’s sharp, angry inhale.

“Are you seriously downplaying my actions, Peter? Seriously?” Contempt was written over his features and his eyes were clouded with an acid bitterness. His voice lowered to an icy chill, containing twice the venom as before. “And ‘tripped into my bed’? You didn’t trip, Peter, I yanked your leg out from under you.”

His comments seemed to unfurl a deeply wound coil of shame in my gut, a potency of emotion that was overwhelming. 

“I— I was just saying, that’s all,” I huffed, feeling my skin crawl from how fiercely uncomfortable the conversation was making me. I could taste bile in the back of my mouth and it was making my stomach quiver with nausea.

“Christ,” Tony swore as his eyes rolled skyward. “Self-preservation instincts of a fucking lemming!”

I lowered my chin to my chest, but Tony yanked it back up with none of the gentleness of before. It was yet another demeaning example of how pathetic I was, and I felt the prickle of humiliated, angry tears.

“Oh, like you’re any better? One minute you’re punching me into the ground and the next you’re playing nurse?”

Tony’s nostrils flared and he visibly bit down on the retort that was desperate to fly off his lips. But for all the brutality of his expression, his fingers were gentle as they reached up to feather along my bruises.

“Tell me if this hurts, Peter,” he ordered, studiously ignoring my attempted provocation. I clenched my teeth and stared angrily at the wall behind him.

“I don’t know why you’re even bothering, after how you acted in your bedroom.” It sounded petulant and bitter as I said it — exactly how I felt.

“I am not having this conversation with you,” Tony muttered in a tone of finality, signalling a clear attempt to brush off my comments. I felt the sudden urge to pierce as many holes through his unbothered facade as possible.

“That wasn’t your attitude before! ‘ _I could hurt you so easily right now, Peter,_ ’” I quoted, doing my best to imitate the deep growl of his most intimidating tone.

Instead of riling him up, the impression seemed to have the opposite effect as Tony let out a surprised peal of laughter. I couldn’t help the surge of impotent fury I felt from the fact that even Tony’s laughter was attractive.

“Oh christ that was ador— dorky impression. Gonna have to level up that testosterone if you want to sound anything like me, kid,” he said through a grin that was only half teasing.

“Shut up!” I squawked. Tony’s smile stretched wider, and I could feel it becoming harder and harder to maintain my sullen attitude. God, he was unbearable. God, I hated him.

I scowled, but it only made his eyes gleam anew with amusement.

“You’re such a prick!”

Tony mimed playing a tiny violin at me, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.

Tony’s fingers resumed their careful dance along my jawline and began the slow crawl up my left cheek. The kitchen descended back into a silence that felt — well, after the last few minutes, I guess it was a relief not to be at each others’ throats again.

“I—” Tony paused, seeming to catch himself. His brow wrinkled, but a moment later his expression smoothed back into the calm of before. “I may have taken things a little too far. In the bedroom and— before that.”

His gaze was focused on the bruising on my cheek, but I had the impression that he was deliberately avoiding my eyes.

“Wow, was that actually an apology—”

“Shut it.”

“—from the great Tony Stark?”

“Be quiet, Peter.”

I felt the urge to rub his face in the admission, but bit down on it before I said something I regretted. We had somehow shifted into a delicate neutrality, and I didn’t want to be the one to disturb it.

Tony’s fingers continued the path up my face, tracing ever so gently along the bruises and the marks. Despite myself, I could feel something soothed and comforted inside my stomach, a feeling that shared something in common with the warmth of a heavy blanket on a cold winter’s night. 

I had always been — the word May had used was ‘tactile’ — and she had learned pretty early after I moved in with her and Ben that the best way to calm me down was to offer some form of physical intimacy. I always seemed to respond well to comforting gestures and the warmth of human contact, and it was an aspect of my physiology that was definitely making itself known now.

I must have pulled a face, because Tony’s ministrations immediately stilled. “That hurts?”

My mouth had gone dry, so I covered up the reaction by nodding at him.

Tony’s frown deepened as he continued tracing the bruising along my face, his touch — if it was possible — growing even gentler than before. I could feel the barest flutter of skin against my own, barely more than the brush of a butterfly’s wing against my face. 

“I’m not made of china, you know,” I pouted, feeling uneasy from the delicate attention.

Tony gave no sign that he had heard the comment as he continued his delicate inspection of my face. His eyelids drooped to a half mast and he started making these soothing noises at me, like I was a scared colt.

“You’re being ridiculous!”

He flashed me a knowing smirk as he continued his inspection, but thankfully he eased off on the noises.

The longer Tony continued, the more I could feel the repetitive strokes becoming hypnotic, lulling me into an almost dreamlike state. It was like Tony’s gentle motions were making something unlock inside my stomach, like they were relaxing a muscle I hadn’t realised I’d been clenching tight all evening.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Tony’s ministrations came to an end and his fingers lifted off my face.

“Where else did I hurt you, Peter?”

I fought my eyes back open, trying to shake off the almost trance-like tranquillity I had been lulled into.

“I mean, it was the floor that—”

Tony made a warning growl in his throat and the sentence died on my lips.

“There’s a bump. It’s under my hair, near the back of my head,” I admitted.

Tony nodded and eased my chin down, exposing the top of my head to him. His fingers landed back on my cheek and started a delicate trail to my scalp, travelling up my temple with the same soft motions that were halfway between a tap and a stroke. My eyelids slid shut, surrendering back to the hypnagogic sensations.

Tony’s fingers stalled before they crossed into my hairline, pausing as he seemed to consider something. I felt a knot of anticipation in my stomach as I waited for his fingers to land in my hair, a tightly wound fluttering that had me clenching the muscles in my core. The sensation continued to ratchet up as I was kept waiting, until I could feel small, tingling contractions travelling down my spine.

My mouth hung open and my tongue reached out to wet my lips. My gaze was fuzzy, just sort of staring off into the middle distance.

I sucked in some air at the same moment Tony’s fingers resumed moving, traversing the final few inches before crossing the border to my scalp.

“—”

I choked on my breath and had to hold my body taut against the pleasurable convulsions that spasmed down my back. The scrape of Tony’s fingers against my scalp was making volleys of tingles zip down my spinal column, intense enough to make me lock my thighs against the sides of my chair in a tight squeeze.

If he had noticed my reaction, Tony gave no sign of it. His fingers travelled in circular motions as he scouted along my scalp, brushing through clumps of brown hair as he hunted for the bruises. My breathing grew louder as he continued, the quiet rasping seeming as loud as a gunshot in the silent kitchen.

_Oh no, oh—_

The delicacy of Tony’s fingers was maddening, his touch as soft as a kitten’s tongue. I didn’t know if I wanted him to ease off or dig his fingers into the delicate skin hard enough to make me whimper.

“F-further back,” I somehow managed to gut out.

Something in my voice must have surprised him, as Tony’s fingers jerked in my hair, tugging harshly against the follicles.

The reaction was immediate and cataclysmic. Needles of pleasure flooded my scalp, cascading down my back with enough violence to make me shudder. I could feel severe tingling spasms wrack the length of my spine, before pooling in my belly and making it quiver with a syrupy heat.

It was beyond mortifying. I tried to apologise, but a strangled noise came out of my throat.

“S-s-”

Tony’s fingers tugged at my hair again, and I almost whited out from the sensation. It was like there was a wire running from Tony’s hand in my scalp down into my stomach and my groin, and I could feel every twitch of his fingers as if it was tugging through the length of my insides. My fingers clawed desperately at the chair beneath me, and the strangled moan I let out was was twice as mortifying as the first.

There was no disguising it now, that noise couldn’t have been anything else.

My face _burned_ with humiliation. I mustered the courage to meet his eyes in a pleading look, but there was something feral in his features, a glint of madness across his gaze. His pupils were as large as I had ever seen them and for a moment I felt a violent thrill of fear that sang with the same intensity as the spasms of pleasure still shooting down my spine.

Tony yanked his hand out of my hair like he had been holding it in a fire. I let out a gravelly hiss at the sensation and slumped over, my whole body trembling with the aftershocks.

I was still reeling when Tony hoisted the frozen bag of peas at my face, pressing it against the bruising on my cheek in such a way as to entirely obstruct my view of his face.

“Here,” he barked in a voice that sounded shaken, despite Tony’s best attempts to disguise it.

I gripped the ice pack and tried to fight off the catastrophic level of humiliation flooding my stomach. My eyes were on the floor and every muscle in my body hunched, shrinking to make me as small as possible. 

“Keep it there. I’m gonna—”

I never found out what Tony was going to do as he fled the kitchen, leaving me alone with my utter mortification.

Oh. Oh no.

What had I done? What had I let happen?

Panic clawed at my throat. He couldn’t— he couldn’t _know_.

It was an ugly truth. One that should never have been allowed to surface.

Oh god. I was sick, I was—

A thin wail climbed my throat and tears glistened in my eyes.

“F—” 


End file.
